deadbeat

Thân thiện

A man is labeled a deadbeat for not paying his child support.

Definition

Noun: 1. A person who avoids paying debts or fulfilling financial responsibilities: The term specifically refers to someone who fails to meet a financial obligation, such as repaying a loan or paying child support. 2. A lazy or idle person: Informally, it can describe a person who is habitually idle and avoids work or responsibility.

Usage Examples

• Noun (Financial):
  • The court ordered the deadbeat to start making payments on his overdue child support.
  • The credit agency flagged him as a deadbeat after he defaulted on three loans.
• Noun (Idle person):
  • He's just a deadbeat who spends all day on the couch watching TV.
  • Don't be such a deadbeat; help us clean up after the party.

Advanced Usage

• "Deadbeat dad/mom": A specific, common collocation referring to a parent, typically a father, who fails to pay court-ordered child support.
  • The new law aims to track down deadbeat dads and enforce child support payments.

Variants and Related Words

• Deadbeat can also be used as an adjective in technical contexts (e.g., engineering, electronics) to describe something that minimizes recoil or oscillation, but this is a highly specialized usage unrelated to the common noun definition.
• Deadbeat (adj.): In horology, a is a type of mechanism in precision clocks.

Synonyms

• Defaulter: A person who fails to fulfill a financial agreement.
• Good-for-nothing: A worthless or lazy person.
• Leach / Freeloader: A person who exploits others' generosity without giving anything in return.
• Wastrel: A person who wastes their time or resources idly.

Related Idioms and Phrases

• To be a deadbeat: The standard phrase to describe someone with the characteristics above.
  • He promised to pay me back, but he turned out to be a deadbeat.

Học thuật

Noun

1. someone who fails to meet a financial obligation

Từ đồng nghĩa

• defaulter