malinger
UK/məˈlɪŋɡə//məˈlɪŋɡɚ/
malinger verb: to feign illness, injury, or incapacitation in order to avoid work, obligation, or perilous risk.
Verb
malinger (third-person singular simple present malingers, present participle malingering, simple past and past participle malingered)
- To feign illness, injury, or incapacitation in order to avoid work, obligation, or perilous risk.
- It is not uncommon on exam days for several students to malinger rather than prepare themselves.
- 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.1915 June, T[homas] S[tearns] Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, in Prufrock and Other Observations, London: The Egoist […], published 1917, →OCLC, page 13
- To self-inflict real injury or infection (to inflict self-harm) in order to avoid work, obligation, or perilous risk.
Proper noun capitalized: Malinger
Malinger (plural Malingers)
- A surname.
malinger meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada
malinger in Urdu
- بیمار بننا
malinger in Bengali
- অসুস্থতার ভান করা
malinger in Malayalam
- feign illness, fake illness, pretend to be ill
- രോഗം നടിക്കുക, കള്ളദീനം നടിക്കുക, രോഗമുണ്ടെന്നു ഭാവിക്കുക, അസുഖം ഭാവിക്കുക, രോഗിയാണെന്നു നടിക്കുക, രോഗംനടിച്ച് ജോലിയിൽനിന്നൊഴിഞ്ഞുമാറുക
malinger in Kannada
- ಕುತ್ತದ ಸೋಗುಹಾಕು
More languagesFewer languages
- malinger in Arabic
- تَمَارَضَ tamāraḍa
Forms of malinger
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | malingers |
| present participle | malingering |
| past participle | malingered |
| past | malingered |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Malingers |
Origin of malinger
From French malingrer, from adjective malingre (“delicate, fragile”).
Words formed from malinger
Words that rhyme with malinger
Questions about malinger
- What does malinger mean?
- Malinger means to feign illness, injury, or incapacitation in order to avoid work, obligation, or perilous risk.
- What is malinger in Urdu?
- Malinger in Urdu is بیمار بننا. See Malinger meaning in Urdu.
- What part of speech is malinger?
- Malinger can be a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce malinger?
- Malinger is pronounced /məˈlɪŋɡə/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of malinger?
- The past tense of malinger is malingered.
Words near malinger in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: malinger (page history and authors); Malinger (page history and authors); malinger (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Malinger (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); malinger (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); malinger (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-malinger.ogg, en-au-malinger.ogg.
Cite this entry: “malinger.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/malinger. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.