''malinger'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''malinger'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260305143651-00-⌔

malinger - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Verb

malinger (third-person singular simple present malingers, present participle malingering, simple past and past participle malingered)

• (ambitransitive) To feign illness, injury, or incapacitation in order to avoid work, obligation, or perilous risk.
  • ✤ Hypernyms: (dated) goldbrick, shirk
  • ✤ It is not uncommon on exam days for several students to malinger rather than prepare themselves.
  • ✤ And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!/Smoothed by long fingers,/Asleep … tired … or it malingers,/Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.¹
  • ✤ It has been the impression of past investigators that persons who malinger psychosis have latent tendencies for the condition.²
• (ambitransitive) To self-inflict real injury or infection (to inflict self-harm) in order to avoid work, obligation, or perilous risk.

Etymology

From French malingrer, from adjective malingre (“delicate, fragile”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /məˈlɪŋɡə/
• (US) IPA: /məˈlɪŋɡɚ/
• Audio (US): 🔊
• Audio (Australian): 🔊
• Rhymes: -ɪŋɡə(ɹ)

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

1. 1915 June, T[homas] S[tearns] Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, in Prufrock and Other Observations, London: The Egoist […], published 1917, →OCLC, page 13: ↩

2. 1984, The Psychiatric Quarterly ‎${}^{[1]}$, volume 56: ↩

Link to original

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