to feign illness or other incapacity in order to avoid duty or work
This is word 2 in the series on not telling the truth. It also makes an appearance in T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”:
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.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep… tired… or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?