(v. t.) To procure by petty fraud and trickery; to obtain by mean solicitation.
(v. t.) To avoid; to escape; to neglect; -- implying unfaithfulness or fraud; as, to shirk duty.
(v. i.) To live by shifts and fraud; to shark.
(v. i.) To evade an obligation; to avoid the performance of duty, as by running away.
(n.) One who lives by shifts and tricks; one who avoids the performance of duty or labor.
Example Sentences:
(1) Others have found more striking-power, or more simple poetry, but none an interpretation at once so full (in the sense of histrionic volume) and so consistently bringing all the aspects together, without any shirking or pruning away of what is inconvenient.
(2) A new report is just another excuse for those in power to shirk responsibility, to blame the people they have already degraded once and who cannot defend themselves.
(3) Time at home, alone, without chores, is still often felt as shirking responsibility.
(4) He’s taking a lot of stick at the moment – as everyone is – but it is a measure of him that he fronts it up every day and doesn’t shirk it.
(5) Shirk said one-party China – a country most still associate with little more than economic success and autocratic governance – saw a chance to rebrand itself as a benevolent great power acting in the common good.
(6) Neville has work ahead; the good news is that he will not shirk it.
(7) While some bosses shirk from defending their personal pay deals, Horta-Osório – whose 10-strong management team cashed in on £23m through the same bonus scheme – does not.
(8) Schreiber points out that some of the debates against the ERA were about "masculinity run amok": "Phyllis Schlafly said if we were are treated as equals, then men will shirk their responsibilities," she notes.
(9) Poon said Beijing was attempting to shift the focus on to how much medical attention Liu was receiving to shirk responsibility for its “cold-blooded” treatment of the democracy activist.
(10) They chased every ball, never shirked a tackle and, when they needed a centre-forward to show composure and experience, they had a 32-year-old from Stoke City, with silver flecks in his hair, who passed the test with distinction.
(11) Focusing on glorifying and eternalising the leaders and taking refuge in God and inserting them into hidden shirk [idolatry] through immortalising ephemeral, temporary personalities.
(12) At the same time, we will not shirk from vigorously defending our right and proper role to expose wrongdoing in the public interest."
(13) Are workers seen as a burden, a cost, people who would rather skive and shirk responsibilities, and who have to be supervised rigorously at all times?
(14) Jones said Australia was engaging with the UN with goodwill on how best to tackle the crisis, and not on how to shirk its international responsibilities.
(15) As Republicans we will not shirk our responsibility and we believe that it is now necessary for us to take this lead in bringing the agreement to its conclusion.
(16) "My desire to devolve authority has nothing to do with a wish to shirk responsibility.
(17) But he has never been one to shirk a challenge, choosing to serve in Vietnam so he could stay in the US after moving to New York in the 1960s.
(18) Some European partners are shirking from the task,” she said.
(19) However, human rights groups say Britain is shirking its legal responsibilities – fearful that the route could be seen as a “back door” to Britain – and coercing people into staying put while paying Cyprus to house and feed them.
(20) It’s not me shirking my responsibilities, I take internet security seriously, but I can’t always protect myself against an army of online fraud experts.
Shirker
Definition:
(n.) One who shirks.
Example Sentences:
(1) It is bad enough that the minimum wage required by law is hardly generous, yet there we were again last week confronted with reports of delivery company Hermes exploiting workers , HM Revenue & Customs widening its investigation into the notorious wages shirker Sports Direct and a challenge to Uber’s employment practices.
(2) Only those with very long memories could recall the former Labour health minister’s call in 2013 for the coalition government to drop “the strivers versus shirkers rhetoric” .
(3) We urge all party leaders to tackle the deficit fairly, to repair the recent damage to the social security system and to cease misleading, and divisive, rhetoric such as “strivers” and “shirkers”.
(4) In other words – and ironically in view of the coalition’s rhetoric – many of those forced to claim the working-age benefits targeted for further cuts are not what the prime minister calls “shirkers” but, in fact, “hard working families”.
(5) The stories of the "rotten shirker" butcher of Finchley, of the German baker whose shop was destroyed by crowds shouting anti-German abuse, and of the last son at home whose four brothers had already died in the first world war are revealed in records released online by the National Archives at Kew .
(6) But such is the toxicity of the shirkers-versus-strivers message, delivered by all the leading political parties, that facts are no longer believed.
(7) Osborne gloried in his depiction of his actions in support of the nation's "strivers" and attack on the shirkers.
(8) He loathed the way the chancellor framed arguments about benefits as “strivers versus shirkers”.
(9) Having waged war on shirkers – be they old, disabled, single parents – all now scrabble to be on the side of "workers".
(10) Meanwhile, at the launch of a report on poverty published by the Church in Wales and Oxfam Cymru on Tuesday, the archbishop led calls for citizens to question false stereotypes of those in poverty as shirkers and skivers.
(11) The Tories need to promise something for ordinary voters but Labour has also been busy talking about itself as the party "of work", for no one wants to be seen as the shirkers' party, though globalisation means the world of work is a deeply insecure place.
(12) Miliband’s “zero-zero” was a rhetorical flourish, calling for better pay and clawing back the £34bn (some say much more) from the evaders and avoiders and the Luxembourg shirkers, from Dyson to Amazon.
(13) They play a trio of shirkers dodging trench service during the First World War.
(14) As in our previous communication, we continue to be worried by grossly misleading rhetoric concerning those who have to seek support from the welfare state, such as the contrast between “strivers” and “shirkers” , which risks undermining trust not only among different sections of society but also across generations.
(15) To be sure, some countries are worse than others, with the United States topping the list of responsibility shirkers.
(16) He said Osborne had set out a false choice between strivers in work and shirkers out of work and on benefit, saying 60% of families hit by the tax and benefit changes set out in the chancellor's autumn statement last week were in work.
(17) When the coalition capped benefit rises at 1%, it was not, in the main, the jobless “shirker” who suffered.
(18) Any genuinely progressive LGBT activism would challenge the divisive narrative of workers and shirkers, strivers and scroungers, and address the growing social and economic inequalities that leave vulnerable LGBT people prey to poverty, violence and discrimination.
(19) Harvey is a telling target: a fitting symbol of the myth that it is the shirkers and spongers around us who are to blame for our ills.
(20) To recap: as a desperate Conservative party scrabbles around for anything approaching a sense of purpose, David Cameron and George Osborne are sounding ever more shrill about the supposed divide between "workers" and "shirkers", or "strivers" and "skivers"; and this latest proposal is aimed at alchemising popularity from prejudice by capping most working-age benefits – including tax credits – at 1% a year until 2015, severing the link between social security (can we use that term, rather than that ideologically loaded US import "welfare"?)