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loafers

nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #8,384 of 15,258leans spoken

Loafers are flat shoes you slide on without laces. A pair of loafers, leather loafers, wear loafers.

The penny loafer has a slot across the strap, and American students really did keep a coin there for a phone call, which is where the name came from. They began as informal shoes and are now worn with suits, which purists still argue about.

Goodreg3 · CC0

Definitions of loafers

  1. 1nounloafersFlat shoes you slide on without laces.B2+

    “He slipped on a pair of brown loafers and went out without socks.”

loafers is shoes.

Where it comes from

  1. Old English

    lāf — remainder, residue, what is left

  2. Middle English

    love

  3. English

    loafer

  4. English, today

    loafers

Built from

  • loofen · German — to run
  • looffinge · Middle English — a remnant, the rest, that which remains or lingers

loafer Perhaps short for landloafer, possibly a partial translation of German Landläufer (compare dialectal German loofen (“to run”), and English landlouper); or more likely connected to Middle English love, loove, loffinge, looffinge (“a remnant, the rest, that which remains or lingers”), from Old English lāf (“remainder, residue, what is left”) (more at lave), which is akin to Scots lave (“the rest, remainder”), Old English lǣfan (“to let remain, leave behind”) (more at leave).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Clothes & Fashion

Practise this word

loafers in the wild

  • The style which is most commonly seen, known as a loafer, slippers, or penny loafers in American culture, has a moccasin construction.

    Slip-on shoe

  • Venetian-style shoes or Venetian-style loafers are mid-heel slippers with an upper or top part that is slightly open to the kick of the foot and the ankle bone.

    Venetian-style shoe

  • By the 20th century, slip-on loafers had become common footwear for men.

    Venetian-style shoe

  • Sebago also offers penny loafers in casual and dress styles; the Classic Dan style is the most popular.

    Sebago (company)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.