What's the difference between lazy and shiftless?

Lazy


Definition:

  • (superl.) Disinclined to action or exertion; averse to labor; idle; shirking work.
  • (superl.) Inactive; slothful; slow; sluggish; as, a lazy stream.
  • (superl.) Wicked; vicious.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The "lazy-T" technique consists of a surgical horizontal and vertical shortening of the involved portion of the lower eyelid.
  • (2) In February last year the BBC was forced to apologise to the Mexican ambassador after a joke made by the three presenters that the nation's cars were like the people "lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight, leaning against a fence asleep looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat".
  • (3) Extensive research among the Afghan National Army – 68 focus groups – and US military personnel alike concluded: "One group sees the other as a bunch of violent, reckless, intrusive, arrogant, self-serving profane, infidel bullies hiding behind high technology; and the other group [the US soldiers] generally views the former as a bunch of cowardly, incompetent, obtuse, thieving, complacent, lazy, pot-smoking, treacherous, and murderous radicals.
  • (4) But Shukrallah says groups like Dostour are weak not through laziness but because they were not allowed to develop under Mubarak and his predecessors.
  • (5) Simon Parker, a senior lecturer at the University of York, told the New Statesman that, during the recent dispute over lecturers' pay, his mobile phone number was posted on Facebook, with the instruction to students to give him a call if they felt they had been "fucked over" by the "lazy bastards in the AUT".
  • (6) For every drop shot that was loose, lazy and tossed away a point, there was another that smacked of insouciant brilliance.
  • (7) All Cavendishes are lazy by nature, and my entire life has been a battle against indolence.
  • (8) The logic is transitive and not direct: by “inner cities” Ryan meant black; by describing black men as not “learning” the “value and culture of work” – and since Charles Murray has called poor people “lazy” – Ryan was saying black men were lazy.
  • (9) Even more pointedly, he attacked the common Republican philosophical refuge of the doctrine of unintended consequences, or, as he put it, “We can’t do anything because we don’t yet know everything.” “The bullshitters have gotten pretty lazy,” he said, and the previous six hours of debate coverage on Fox News could have told you as much.
  • (10) I see evidence for this every week when I hear otherwise bright and articulate students justify their political opinions with vague, lazy arguments.
  • (11) In his book Fight the Power , Chuck rails against everything from Hollywood to the sports industry for portraying blacks as 'watermelon stealin', chicken eatin', knee knockin', eye poppin' lazy, crazy, dancin', submissive, Toms.
  • (12) Hate the smoking ban, HS2, Brussels, travellers, burqas, regulation, tax, Boris, debt, windfarms, quangos, foreign aid, crime, Abu Qatada, Muslims, tuition fees, lazy people, asylum seekers, the hunting ban?
  • (13) Perpetuating the myth that DLA prevents disabled people from working just stirs the assertion that disabled people are lazy scroungers, when the truth is that they would like nothing more than to work and contribute like everyone else.
  • (14) Their MPs tend to spend years chipping away at their seats before they win, getting under the skin of places in a way other parties don't, and once elected tend not to get lazy or complacent.
  • (15) David Miliband's heartache at leadership loss revealed in new Hillary Clinton emails Read more Longtime Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal also wrote a number of memos to the secretary of state on American politics, including one describing the current Speaker of the House, John Boehner, as “louche, alcoholic [and] lazy” while predicting that Mitt Romney would run for president on a ticket with former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, whom he compared to Dick Cheney.
  • (16) This weather pushes players to be a bit lazy, to lose a bit of tension, a bit of sharpness, after that you pass slow, you do not react to the second balls, the time goes on and on, then when you wake up, it is half-time.
  • (17) David Ruffley, a Conservative MP on the Treasury select committee, said other risk-taking bankers and lazy regulators should also be examined.
  • (18) John Byrom, a lazy, self-indulgent 18th-century versifier, had three black hedgehogs on his coat of arms.
  • (19) Such curiosity is not a big ask, and demanding such rigorous thinking from tutors seems a much more effective way of getting diverse students into top universities than creating a mythical list of "better" subjects, writing them into the league tables and thereby sanctioning the lazy dismissal of anyone who does not fit the mould.
  • (20) (And the tech, if I wasn’t as lazy, could help me get better at cooking.)

Shiftless


Definition:

  • (a.) Destitute of expedients, or not using successful expedients; characterized by failure, especially by failure to provide for one's own support, through negligence or incapacity; hence, lazy; improvident; thriftless; as, a shiftless fellow; shiftless management.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) You had those riots in 2011 … If riots started again in Leeds and bits of my constituency – it’s like a tinderbox.” It’s a shiftless and opportunistic argument that makes no use of the plentiful analysis and research that has gone into those riots – none of which even name-checked the EU or freedom of movement – preferring to dangle the violence as a decontextualised spectre, reminding us that it’s a dark and dangerous world out there, the people are angry and their rage must be assuaged.
  • (2) Now, as Romney admits, the wealthy deem virtually half the voting public as irredeemably shiftless moochers.
  • (3) Behind the high steel fences of the Manus Island detention centre, his health is often poor, his moods swing dramatically, from a wild, garrulous mania to black and shiftless depression.
  • (4) The modern characterisation of this class is that its members are insecure and shiftless – lacking either the job security and collectivism of the old working class, or the capital of the traditional middle class.

Words possibly related to "shiftless"