loafer

Etymology 1

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).

noun

1. An idle person.
2. A shoe with no laces, resembling a moccasin.
   Someone must explain to Sunak about the time bomb ticking beneath his £1,000 loafers. May 31 2023, Nigel Harris, “Comment: GBR now! We have no Plan B”, in RAIL, number 984, page 3

verb

1. (dialect) To loaf around; to be idle.

Etymology 2

From American Spanish lobo (“wolf”) (/ˈloβo/), reinterpreted as or conflated with loafer (“idler”); compare the alternative forms which reflect other re-interpretations and conflations. Doublet of lupus and wolf.

noun

1. (Southwestern US dialects) A wolf, especially a grey or timber wolf.
   The great menace to livestock, other than the continual battle with cold, … was the gray wolf. … The big loafers came in from everywhere. 1964, Ike Blasingame, Dakota Cowboy: My Life in the Old Days, page 72
   Cowboys had killed “loafers” at five hundred yards away with rifles. … Lucille was not like most cowhands and she sets out to capture the "loafer" with her lariat. 2010, Cynthia K. Rhodes, Lucille Mulhall: An Athlete of Her Time
   By the 1890s loafers had become such a problem that some newly organized counties, as well as certain cattle outfits, paid bounties for their scalps. For a cowboy making a dollar or so a day, wolf-hunting could be lucrative. 2016, Patrick Dearen, A Cowboy of the Pecos, page 128