shiftless

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Or the shiftless hack who hated his profession?

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 16, 2021

In that classic American tale by Washington Irving published in 1819, an amiable but shiftless farmer strolls out of his colonial village to go hunting in the Catskill Mountains.

From Salon • Jan. 27, 2021

Colm Meaney plays a shiftless guy in late-80s Ireland who is reasonably happy on welfare but has a Damascene conversion to entrepreneurialism.

From The Guardian • Apr. 16, 2020

“The idea of being a writer attracts a good many shiftless people,” Flannery O’Connor wrote with merciless accuracy, “those who are merely burdened with poetic feelings or afflicted with sensibility.”

From Washington Post • Apr. 11, 2016

If Big Ma heard Vonetta and saw her standing like a shiftless bum on the comer, we’d be on the next plane back to New York City.

From "One Crazy Summer" by Rita Williams-Garcia