malinger
verbUK /məˈlɪŋɡə/ · US /məˈlɪŋɡɚ/
Etymology From French malingrer, from adjective malingre (“delicate, fragile”).
1
Ambitransitive To feign illness, injury, or incapacitation in order to avoid work, obligation, or perilous risk.
- 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.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:
1 more example
- It has been the impression of past investigators that persons who malinger psychosis have latent tendencies for the condition.1984, The Psychiatric Quarterly, volume 56:
2
Ambitransitive To self-inflict real injury or infection (to inflict self-harm) in order to avoid work, obligation, or perilous risk.
- Derived terms
- malingerer, malingering, malingeror, malingery
- Related terms
- factitious disorder, differentiated from malingering by a component of real mental illness as opposed to solely a sane calculation of shirking, to call out someone for, or accuse someone of, either factitious pretense, malingering