shirk

present singular third person shirks · participle present shirking · participle past shirked · past shirked

1. transitiveTo avoid, especially a duty, responsibility, etc.; to stay away from.

   the usual makeshift by which they try to shirk difficulties

   1826, Julius Hare, Guesses at Truth by Two Brothers

   1 more example

   Back in school, you ever get busted for trynna walk and have some administrator tell you / "Son, you can shirk your obligations, / and try to be different from your peers, / but responsibility, your future / is gonna find you!"

   1989, “Gonna Find You”, in Operation Ivy (CD), performed by Operation Ivy, Lookout Records, →OCLC

2. intransitiveTo evade an obligation; to avoid the performance of duty, as by running away.

   If you have a job, don't shirk from it by staying off work.

   2 more examples

   September 7, 1830, Lord Byron, letter to Mr. Murray One of the cities shirked from the league.

   Shapiro and Stiglitz (1984) develop a dynamic model in which firms induce workers to work hard by paying high wages and threatening to fire workers caught shirking.

   1992, Robert Gibbons, A Primer in Game Theory, Prentice-Hall, page 107

3. transitiveTo procure by petty fraud and trickery; to obtain by mean solicitation.

   You that never heard the call of any vocation, […] that shirk living from others, but time from yourselves.

   1635, Bishop Rainbow, Sermons

plural shirks

1. One who shirks, who avoids a duty or responsibility.

   1 more example

   I may add here that, coming as the soldiers did from all avocations and stations in life, these details for fatigue often brought together men few of whom had any practical knowledge of the work in hand; so that aside from the shirks, who could work but would not, there were other who would but could not, at least intelligently.

   1887, John Davis Billings, Hardtack and Coffee, Or, The Unwritten Story of Army Life, pages 101–102

   Synonyms: dodger

1. uncountableIslamThe unforgivable sin of association (claiming something or someone can share in the oneness of God).

   A person can have committed shirk in their lifetime and still find forgiveness (especially by saying the Shahada and becoming a Muslim). The concept is that if one dies in this state (as a mushrik, an idolator, one who engages in and does not repent shirk), there is no forgiveness.

   2013, James R. White, What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Qur'an, Baker Books, →ISBN

plural Shirks

1. A surname.