How to Use layabout in a Sentence
layabout
noun-
The trick is to avoid becoming either a workaholic or a layabout.
—Arthur C. Brooks, The Atlantic, 4 Aug. 2022
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The solution: his layabout best bud (Adam Sandler) steps in and takes charge of the child, who turns his world upside down.
—John Ortved, Vogue, 18 June 2017
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But Yolanda is busy babying Amadeo, Angel’s 33-year-old layabout dad.
—Meredith Maran, Los Angeles Times, 27 Mar. 2021
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Hulu’s show tapped in to a certain kind of layabout, day-drinking malaise that is currently missing from a lot of people’s summers.
—Angela Watercutter, Wired, 7 Aug. 2020
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Anyone magnanimous enough to apologize to a deadbeat layabout like me (and my staff) doesn't deserve to be banned from anywhere.
—Li Cohen, CBS News, 18 Oct. 2022
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Benjamin was cast as Dr. Katz’s layabout son, and Silverman as his receptionist.
—New York Times, 25 May 2022
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But just as millennials chafe at being labeled tattooed layabouts, funny people in their middle years want to be seen as more than just fussy, bossy or out of touch.
—Nara Schoenberg, chicagotribune.com, 20 Oct. 2017
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The food company, widely admired in the industry for its track record of turning around aging brands, sees opportunity for the Andy Capp’s line of snacks, named after the layabout star of the British comic strip....
—Aaron Back, WSJ, 12 Apr. 2019
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Victims of the disaster were quickly recast as looters, criminals, and layabouts.
—Max Holleran, New Republic, 2 Aug. 2017
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Fourteen-year-old Adunni lives in a Nigerian village with her layabout, alcoholic father and two brothers.
—Tsitsi Dangarembga, New York Times, 28 Feb. 2020
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That gives the lie to a recurrent Republican meme that disability is little more than a haven for layabouts and malingerers.
—Michael Hiltzik, latimes.com, 5 June 2018
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Now it’s 10 years later; the kaiju-from-another-dimension invasion (the worst kind) has been quelled, and young Jake is a scavenger and a layabout and a character arc waiting to be put into motion.
—Michael Phillips, chicagotribune.com, 21 Mar. 2018
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The relationships among the characters feel lived-in; the generational tension between a group of layabout teens, pulling inhumane pranks in the woods, and their pained parents is especially vivid.
—Doreen St. Félix, The New Yorker, 3 May 2021
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These layabouts wreak enough havoc, what with their aimless loquacity and their tendencies to monopolize wall outlets.
—Justin Peters, Slate Magazine, 20 Dec. 2017
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But that’s a trick of historical perspective—even the most feared white supremacists in the lore of Jim Crow were just regular white men, transformed from lives as politicians, mechanics, farmers, and layabouts by the sheer power of ideology.
—Vann R. Newkirk Ii, The Atlantic, 12 Aug. 2017
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Orwell thought of the poor as decent people, but he’d be baffled to observe today that the welfare state has created a class of layabouts who, liberated from economic anguish, shackle themselves to screens, drugs, alcohol.
—Kyle Smith, National Review, 11 June 2019
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Americans may be big enough to contain both frontier individualists and comfort-seeking layabouts.
—Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, BostonGlobe.com, 19 May 2018
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Cole refuses, cementing his reputation as a feckless layabout.
—Omar L. Gallaga, Washington Post, 17 Oct. 2022
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'layabout.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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