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
  • Not surprisingly, some colonists preferred to be layabouts.
    — The Editorial Board, Oc Register, 27 Nov. 2025
  • But his Johnny is a sullen layabout, lacking in the punk rock energy that the role requires.
    — Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 18 Oct. 2024
  • Marlon's Shorty Meeks is in his 25th year of high school, but has made millions as a layabout live-streamer.
    — Ryan Coleman, Entertainment Weekly, 7 June 2026
  • You might be tempted to regard early retirees as layabouts, soaking up sunshine while everyone else toils.
    — Amy X. Wang, New York Times, 7 May 2024
  • But Yolanda is busy babying Amadeo, Angel’s 33-year-old layabout dad.
    — Meredith Maran, Los Angeles Times, 27 Mar. 2021
  • 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
  • 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
  • Victims of the disaster were quickly recast as looters, criminals, and layabouts.
    — Max Holleran, New Republic, 2 Aug. 2017
  • 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
  • In Yancheng, in eastern China, the police have checked karaoke bars, rental housing and hotels for potential layabouts.
    — Vivian Wang, New York Times, 16 Jan. 2025
  • These layabouts wreak enough havoc, what with their aimless loquacity and their tendencies to monopolize wall outlets.
    — Justin Peters, Slate Magazine, 20 Dec. 2017
  • For decades, American life has been dominated by layabouts—by a broad, bi-coastal, bipartisan elite of non-workers.
    — James K. Galbraith, Foreign Affairs, 14 Jan. 2019
  • Terry described Simon — the brother of his late wife —as a layabout who tried to make money by playing various lotteries all day.
    — John Annese, New York Daily News, 21 Jan. 2024
  • As the story begins, Mary and Boo are neighbors, unemployed millennial layabouts who rarely leave their rooms.
    — Katie Rife, IndieWire, 24 Jan. 2026
  • 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
  • Cole refuses, cementing his reputation as a feckless layabout.
    — Omar L. Gallaga, Washington Post, 17 Oct. 2022
  • 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
  • Americans may be big enough to contain both frontier individualists and comfort-seeking layabouts.
    — Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, BostonGlobe.com, 19 May 2018
  • 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
  • Tamma’s mother is partnered with a drug-dealing layabout; Dan’s mother, a onetime successful novelist, has a worsening heart condition.
    — Los Angeles Times, 20 Jan. 2026
  • And typically, Wegmann added, those units are occupied by productive, working adults, not layabouts or career criminals leeching off the system, as the old narrative goes.
    — Matthew Adams, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 9 Mar. 2026
  • The layabout in question is the Alcon blue butterfly (Maculinea alcon) a large and beautiful summer visitor.
    — Ed Yong, Discover Magazine, 16 Oct. 2010
  • 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
  • Consumers of drugs were characterized as unpredictable layabouts who endangered national hygiene and productivity.
    — Federico Perelmuter, Washington Post, 10 Aug. 2023
  • When layabout postman Jesper gets assigned to the frozen town of Smeerensburg with an ultimatum to process 6,000 letters, a reclusive toymaker might be his only hope.
    — K. Thor Jensen, PC Magazine, 15 May 2026
  • That’s because welfare programs are easiest to axe when conservatives go hunting for budget cuts — Americans typically view them as serving layabouts and malingerers at their expense.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 24 Nov. 2023
  • The adventurous will find isolation on an epic scale on northern Iceland's windswept landscape, the traditional serenity on a private island off of Anguilla, and the bohemian layabouts a haven in a compound on the Andalusian coast.
    — Cnt Editors, Condé Nast Traveler, 2 Feb. 2023
  • Republicans consistently slander disability recipients as malingerers and layabouts.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 26 Nov. 2024

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.

Last Updated: