lazy

Formslazier, laziest

Formslazies, lazying, lazied

Plurallazies

1. 1
   adjective

   Not wanting to work or make an effort; avoiding anything that takes exertion.

   Her lazy coworker left all the hard tasks for the rest of the team.

   He felt too lazy to cook, so he ordered takeout instead.

   Similaridle, indolent, slothful, shiftless

   Oppositehardworking, industrious, diligent, energetic

   Note

   The everyday sense, and the one most readers mean. Its origin is uncertain, but it probably comes from Low German lasich, “slack, feeble,” and goes back to a root meaning “weak.” Idleness began as a kind of weakness. It compares regularly as lazier and laziest, and it pairs naturally with too: “I'm too lazy,” says a character in L. Frank Baum's The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913).

2. 2
   adjective

   Showing a lack of effort or care in the way something is done.

   The report was full of lazy mistakes that careful editing would have caught.

   Critics dismissed the film as lazy storytelling with no original ideas.

   Similarcareless, sloppy, slapdash, slipshod

   Oppositecareful, meticulous, thorough, painstaking

3. 3
   adjective

   Marked by idleness or relaxation; calm, unhurried, and leisurely.

   Summer brought long, lazy days beside the lake.

   They enjoyed a lazy brunch that stretched well into the afternoon.

   Similarleisurely, relaxed, unhurried, idle, languid

   Oppositebusy, hectic

4. 4
   adjective

   Moving sluggishly; slow and unhurried in motion.

   Smoke rose in a lazy spiral from the chimney.

   The lazy current carried the raft downstream at a crawl.

   Similarslow, sluggish, languid, unhurried, leisurely

   Oppositefast, swift, rapid, brisk

5. 5
   adjective

   Hanging loosely; drooping or limp.

   Her lazy eyelids drooped as the lecture dragged on.

   The flag hung in lazy folds with no wind to lift it.

   Similarlimp, droopy, drooping, slack, loose

   Note

   Here the old idea of slackness behind the everyday sense is still visible. Something lazy in this way simply hangs without tension, and no idleness is implied. It forms compounds that come before a noun and are hyphenated, as in a lazy-eared rabbit. The same slackness, moved into the muscles of the eye, gives the medical “lazy eye”.

6. 6
   verbcolloquialintransitive

   To act in an idle manner; to laze about.

   They lazy through the long summer afternoons without a care.

   I plan to lazy at home this weekend and recover.

   Similarlounge, idle, loaf, relax

   Note

   A verb made straight from the adjective, usually heard with a particle: lazying around, lazying along, lazy away one's time. O. Henry's “we were lazying around in a boat” (1908) and Mark Twain's sow “lazying along the street” (1884) show the pattern. It is informal, laze is the plainer verb, and its forms are lazies, lazying and lazied.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   A person who avoids work or effort.

   He was branded a lazy by colleagues tired of covering for him.

   The foreman had no patience for lazies on his crew.

   Similarslacker, idler, loafer, layabout, shirker

   Note

   The adjective turned into a label for people. It is most at home in the plural and is almost always dismissive. David Livingstone's Last Journals (1874) still fences it off in scare quotes, "the lazies of the party," as though it were newly borrowed. By 2016 it carries a sweeping stereotype: "a nation of lazies." Its plural is regular, and it packs the scorn of the plain adjective into a single noun.

8. 8
   adjective

   Employing lazy evaluation; not computing a result until it is actually needed.

   Haskell relies on lazy evaluation, so values are computed only on demand.

   A lazy strategy skips any calculation whose result is never used.

   Oppositeeager, strict

   Note

   Computer science borrows the word to describe a strategy rather than a temperament. A lazy algorithm puts off work until some other computation actually needs the value. The usual collocations are lazy evaluation and lazy algorithm. Deferring work avoids needless computation, and it even lets a program represent infinite data structures, since only the part actually used is ever calculated.

9. 9
   adjective

   Of a letter or symbol, turned to lie horizontal rather than standing upright.

   The brand featured a lazy Y turned flat against the hide.

   On the old map, a lazy L marked the abandoned trail.

   Note

   Ranchers' vocabulary: a letter laid on its side in a cattle brand is said to be lazy, as if it were lying down. The word comes before the letter and is usually capitalized as part of the brand's name, as in the Lazy S of The Trail Drivers of Texas or the Lazy B in American Cowboy magazine.

10. 10
    adjective

    Of an eye, squinting or turning aside because of weak eye muscles.

    Doctors gave him exercises to strengthen his lazy eye.

    A lazy eye in childhood can often be corrected with early treatment.

    Note

    An optometrist's term that lives almost entirely in the fixed phrase lazy eye. The squint it names, which clinicians call strabismus, comes from weak eye muscles. So the word keeps its sense of slackness here rather than any suggestion that the eye is idle or careless. Use lazy eye as the everyday label for the condition.

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