(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.
Unforgivable
Definition:
Example Sentences:
(1) Comic writing can be a brutal, unforgiving business, yet it can produce great and multi-layered prose, combining comedy, pathos and satire.
(2) To somehow use the upcoming 2012 Olympics as a reason to do this is, in my opinion, unforgivably cynical.
(3) Obviously she’s probably felt for years that she was black on the inside and denied it all through her childhood ... since she’s transitioned and identifies herself as black, than we should just let her be and live her life in peace.” Mary Elizabeth Williams, a Salon writer, echoed those who said Dolezal’s alleged fraud was unforgivable.
(4) Hollande described Cahuzac's actions as an "unforgivable moral error".
(5) We had hounded Swales out, in an unforgiving public humiliation, for a childhood hero we believed would make us happy again.
(6) When money is tight, it’s simply unforgiveable to waste taxpayers’ money.
(7) In an escalating legal battle between mostly Republican-controlled states and the Obama administration over voter ID and other election laws, a panel of three judges in Washington DC found that the Texas legislation imposed "strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor" because of the cost and process involved in obtaining identification.
(8) By day, they roamed for miles under the unforgiving sun so they would not be around if the men with machine guns swooped in again.
(9) But as the trip to Scranton neared my emotions became uncontrollable, and the nights were unforgivably restless.
(10) By plotting the percent failing in the 1st year as a function of per cycle failure rates for perfect and imperfect use, it was concluded that the OM is fairly effective if used perfectly, extremely unforgiving of imperfect use, and moderately difficult to use perfectly.
(11) He had committed two unforgiveable crimes: seeking a rigorous inspection of US facilities; and pressing Saddam Hussein to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention, to help prevent the war George Bush was itching to wage.
(12) The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse in Rotherham, which involved the abuse of predominantly white girls by predominantly Pakistani men, even suggested that the unforgivable failure of the Labour council to take action was associated with a reluctance to broach ethnically sensitive issues.
(13) These are unforgiving times for people who want to expose what governments want kept secret.
(14) Moral leader The Daily Mail on the FA's refusal to comment on JT: "Even in the sleazy, venal world of football, Terry's record was unforgivable.
(15) In the Radio Times, the show's producer and director, Steven Moffat, lambasts the corporation's "outright stupidity and unforgivable blindness" in axing the show 24 years ago.
(16) Yet Van Gaal will know they have to be more streetwise to prosper in a competition that can be unforgiving.
(17) The 25-year-old footballer, who was released from prison on Friday having served half of a five-year sentence for raping a woman in a hotel room, told the Sunday Mirror in an interview conducted shortly before he was freed that cheating on his girlfriend was “unforgivable”.
(18) Miliband relented, and Balls took the exam, including clapping rhythmically, in the formal, unforgiving atmosphere music examiners love to generate.
(19) They involved not one error, but a whole chain of errors, and they are all essentially unforgiveable,” he said.
(20) But the pressure from ValueAct and other shareholders could be unforgiving.