Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun One who shirks work or responsibility.
  • noun One who tries to evade military service in wartime; a draft dodger.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun One who procrastinates or is lazy.
  • noun A person lacking a sense of direction in life; an underachiever.
  • noun A person who seeks to avoid military service.
  • noun A user of Slackware Linux, a type of application software.
  • noun A member of a certain 1990s subculture associated with Generation X.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a person who shirks his work or duty (especially one who tries to evade military service in wartime)

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From slack +‎ -er; compare especially slack off.

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Examples

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  • "One who avoids or neglects a duty or responsibility; specif., a person who shirks a duty or obligation to his country, esp. in time of war, as by attempting to evade military service."

    December 14, 2006

  • Attorney General Thomas Gregory

    authorized the Bureau of Investigation to round up the "slackers"—men who had failed to register for the military draft—in the spring and summers of 1918.
    Tim Weiner, Enemies: A History of the FBI (New York: Random House, 2012), p. 16

    July 19, 2017