Loafers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A style of footwear that is typically slip-on and designed for casual wear, often crafted from materials like leather or fabric, providing both comfort and ease of use
2. These shoes are characterized by their laced-free design, making them easy to wear and ideal for relaxed settings while often being made from various soft materials
3. Shoes designed without laces that are easy to slip on and commonly worn for informal occasions

Etymology: Loafers are shoes, but the word began as a name for a person who idled about. One candidate origin is "landloafer," a 19th-century term for a vagrant, but the more likely root is a Middle English word for a remnant or leftover, which connects to Old English "lāf," meaning remainder. Someone who loafs is someone who lingers with nothing better to do, like what is left over after the work is done. The shoe came later and by a different route. Its name is usually linked to the "loaf" of bread, because the shoe shares the rounded, unfussy shape of a loaf. The shoe's name therefore has nothing to do with idleness, even though the wearing of loafers is often associated with relaxed settings. Another theory connects the word to Spanish "lobo," meaning wolf, through a process of reinterpretation and conflation with the idler sense. This is a doublet of "lupus" and "wolf," so the word and the animal share a distant Latin ancestry, though this link remains uncertain.

Synonyms: casual shoes, slippers, mules