deadbeat
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.
Noun
-
someone who fails to meet a financial obligation
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