Word.ws English Dictionary

multishirk

multishirk verb: to do more than one non-work activity at once.

Verb

multishirk (third-person singular simple present multishirks, present participle multishirking, simple past and past participle multishirked)

  1. (humorous, neologism, slang) To do more than one non-work activity at once.
    • But in reality you are doing what one Dilbert reader calls multishirking, i.e., doing two nonwork activities at once.
      Multishirking is not only fun; it doubles the odds that an observer will think you're doing at least one work-related activity.1999 September 8, Scott Adams, The Joy of Work: Dilbert's Guide to Finding Happiness at the Expense of Your Co-Workers, Harper Paperbacks, →ISBN, →OL, page 53
    • Sometimes those office workers with a basic grounding in drama will find it easier to multishirk while giving all the outward appearances of working diligently. Multishirking is, of course, preferable to multitasking, which generally means you do two jobs instead of one, for the same money.2005 October 1, Karen Farrington, The Law of the Office: A Guide to the Culture of Working Nine to Five, London: Robson Books, →ISBN, →OL, page 86

Forms of multishirk

third-person singular presentmultishirks
present participlemultishirking
past participlemultishirked
pastmultishirked

Origin of multishirk

From multi- + shirk by analogy to multitask.

Questions about multishirk

What does multishirk mean?
Multishirk means to do more than one non-work activity at once.
What part of speech is multishirk?
Multishirk is a verb.
What is the past tense of multishirk?
The past tense of multishirk is multishirked.

Words near multishirk in the dictionary

  1. multishipped
  2. multishipper
  3. multishippers
  4. multishipping
  5. multiships
  6. multishirk
  7. multishirked
  8. multishirking
  9. multishirks
  10. multishop
  11. multishot

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: multishirk (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-au-multishirk.ogg.

Cite this entry: “multishirk.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/multishirk. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.