shirks

verb

present tense third-person singular of shirk
1
as in avoids
to get or keep away from (as a responsibility) through cleverness or trickery you always try to shirk paying your fair share of the bill by claiming you "forgot" your wallet

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in neglects
to leave undone or unattended to especially through carelessness a deadbeat who has been shirking his duty to his family for years

Synonyms & Similar Words

Antonyms & Near Antonyms
3
as in lurks
to move about in a sly or secret manner given the multitude of auditoriums at the multiplex, it's not too difficult for underaged kids to shirk into R-rated movies

Synonyms & Similar Words

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of shirks Mbappe is right that pressing is a team effort, and one player who never shirks that effort is Valverde, whose endeavour was rewarded with surely the easiest goal of his career. — Dermot Corrigan, New York Times, 8 Sep. 2026 The Buñuelian skeptic in me also shirks at Fried’s approving references to Diderot’s petite église invisible, the small hidden church whose members—painters, critics, curators, patrons—are the vision-gifted serious pursuers of art history. — Carlos Valladares, ARTnews.com, 14 Aug. 2026 Nick, desperate to return to the present, shirks the doting parents and brother who long to comfort him. — Sam Bodrojan, IndieWire, 17 June 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for shirks
  1. avoids
  2. neglects
  3. lurks
  4. evades
  5. sneaks
  6. escapes
  7. slips
  8. slinks
Verb
  • Calibrating policy under current conditions is complicated by Warsh's push for a more mercurial Fed that avoids signaling where policy is heading, preferring for markets to take their own signals from incoming data.
    — Jeff Cox, CNBC, 27 Oct. 2026
  • The proportions remain practical, and the overall design avoids some of the visual excesses found elsewhere in the segment.
    — New Atlas, New Atlas, 24 Oct. 2026
Definition of avoids
Verb
  • The longer that Washington neglects its own robotics sector, the further behind it will fall.
    — Scott Singer, Foreign Affairs, 12 Oct. 2026
  • Both lawsuits seek damages based on a Missouri law that allows lawsuits against the secretary of state if the officeholder neglects their duties.
    — Jack Harvel, Kansas City Star, 18 Sep. 2026
Definition of neglects
Verb
  • What lurks over the next ridge or the next nightfall is anyone’s guess.
    — Angie Han, HollywoodReporter, 23 Oct. 2026
  • The Spurs superstar lurks down low near the basket, allowing guards to pressure aggressively on the perimeter.
    — Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 29 Sep. 2026
Definition of lurks
Verb
  • Neither of those interpretations would be entirely invalid, exactly, and yet The Basics of Philosophy — ironically enough, given its title — mostly evades any such moral didacticism.
    — Richard Lawson, HollywoodReporter, 4 Sep. 2026
  • Journalists and negotiators follow up when someone evades the point.
    — Harvard Business Review, Harvard Business Review, 2 Sep. 2026
Definition of evades
Verb
  • Owen Wilson plays an overprotective dad who sneaks his 13-year-old son (Christian Convery) into the festival.
    — Jill Goldsmith, Deadline, 2 Oct. 2026
  • The titular bed trick refers to the literary device, beloved by Shakespeare and by opera buffa, in which a lover sneaks into a bed and, under cover of darkness, is taken for someone else.
    — S. C. Cornell, New Yorker, 29 Sep. 2026
Definition of sneaks
Verb
  • In the book, a fictional AI escapes its lab, runs copies of itself on machines no one is watching, and eventually releases a virus over time.
    — Catherina Gioino, Fortune, 27 Oct. 2026
  • Network-level protections provide another barrier if an agent escapes its initial sandbox.
    — Aamir Khollam, Interesting Engineering, 23 Oct. 2026
Definition of escapes
Verb
  • With one entity in charge, no community slips through the cracks.
    — Neil Chatterjee, Fortune, 23 Oct. 2026
  • The suit claims the development extends beyond the existing Seaquarium site and into Biscayne Bay, where Resilient Aquarium LLC plans to build more than 300 boat slips that do not currently exist.
    — Abby Dodge, CBS News, 22 Oct. 2026
Definition of slips
Verb
  • Claypool’s voice, formerly a sharp and declarative figure in the mix, slinks down into silty waters, often unintelligible and almost always emotionally ambiguous.
    — Sasha Geffen, Pitchfork, 2 Aug. 2026
  • Anne slinks off with her husband.
    — Keith Phipps, Vulture, 25 Sep. 2025
Definition of slinks

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shirking
shirks
shirtdress
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Cite this Entry

“Shirks.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/shirks. Accessed 29 Oct. 2026.

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