See ne'er-do-well in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for ne'er-do-well meaning in English (7.5kB)
{
"etymology_text": "\"Ne'er-do-well\" is a contracted compound word stemming from the combination of the words \"never do well.\"\n“Never-do-well” is sometimes used as an offhand, expanded version of the phrase, where “never” is not contracted. The usage of this version is often attributed to the northeastern United States.",
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"ref": "1933, The Commonweal, volume 19, page 241",
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"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2012, Christoper Zara, Tortured Artists: From Picasso and Monroe to Warhol and Winehouse, the Twisted Secrets of the World's Most Creative Minds, part 1, chapter 1, 26",
"text": "Clara's father, a trollish ne'er-do-well who spent most of his time in brothels and saloons, would disappear for days and weeks at a stretch, leaving Clara and her mother to fend for themselves.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
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"A person without a means of support; an idle, worthless person; a loafer; a person who is ineffectual, unsuccessful, or completely lacking in merit; a good-for-nothing."
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"A person who is up to no good; a rogue."
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"sounds": [
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],
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}
{
"etymology_text": "\"Ne'er-do-well\" is a contracted compound word stemming from the combination of the words \"never do well.\"\n“Never-do-well” is sometimes used as an offhand, expanded version of the phrase, where “never” is not contracted. The usage of this version is often attributed to the northeastern United States.",
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"ref": "1859, George Sargent, The Story of a Pocket Bible, The Religious Tract Society, page 392",
"text": "The brother who sought me out and would have redeemed me from the power of darkness, but he couldn't; and has robbed himself of joy and comfort in life to keep his ne'er-do-well brother from starvation; who has paid his debts over and taken him out of jail again and again....",
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"ref": "2010, Susan Cayleff, Wash and Be Healed: The Water-Cure Movement and Women's Health, Temple University Press, page 88",
"text": "Before the 1850s, when women figured most prominently in textile employment, the reasons that caused women to seek paid labor—a ne'er-do-well husband, economic distress of the natal family, or a belief that factory work was a road to self-betterment—often precluded their considering an away-from-home cure.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2013, Kelly Hager, Dickens and the Rise of Divorce: The Failed-Marriage Plot and the Novel Tradition, Ashgate Publishing Limited, page 146",
"text": "Think of the scorn with which Nicholas Nicklebys Madame Mantalini treats her ne'er-do-well' husband from whom she insists \"on being separated and left to myself....\"",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
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"Showing the characteristics of a ne'er-do-well: indolent, worthless, or roguish."
],
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"word": "good-for-nothing"
},
{
"word": "nogoodnik"
},
{
"word": "vagabond"
},
{
"word": "never-do-well"
}
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"etymology_text": "\"Ne'er-do-well\" is a contracted compound word stemming from the combination of the words \"never do well.\"\n“Never-do-well” is sometimes used as an offhand, expanded version of the phrase, where “never” is not contracted. The usage of this version is often attributed to the northeastern United States.",
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"ref": "1933, The Commonweal, volume 19, page 241",
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},
{
"ref": "2012, Christoper Zara, Tortured Artists: From Picasso and Monroe to Warhol and Winehouse, the Twisted Secrets of the World's Most Creative Minds, part 1, chapter 1, 26",
"text": "Clara's father, a trollish ne'er-do-well who spent most of his time in brothels and saloons, would disappear for days and weeks at a stretch, leaving Clara and her mother to fend for themselves.",
"type": "quotation"
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],
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"A person without a means of support; an idle, worthless person; a loafer; a person who is ineffectual, unsuccessful, or completely lacking in merit; a good-for-nothing."
],
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"etymology_text": "\"Ne'er-do-well\" is a contracted compound word stemming from the combination of the words \"never do well.\"\n“Never-do-well” is sometimes used as an offhand, expanded version of the phrase, where “never” is not contracted. The usage of this version is often attributed to the northeastern United States.",
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"ref": "2010, Susan Cayleff, Wash and Be Healed: The Water-Cure Movement and Women's Health, Temple University Press, page 88",
"text": "Before the 1850s, when women figured most prominently in textile employment, the reasons that caused women to seek paid labor—a ne'er-do-well husband, economic distress of the natal family, or a belief that factory work was a road to self-betterment—often precluded their considering an away-from-home cure.",
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},
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"type": "quotation"
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"Showing the characteristics of a ne'er-do-well: indolent, worthless, or roguish."
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.