good-for-nothing

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good for nothing

Entirely without value; of no use whatsoever. Hyphenated if used as a modifier before a noun. This junky old computer my dad gave me is good for nothing! That good-for-nothing son of mine has been doing nothing but lying on the couch for the past two months!

good-for-nothing

If you describe someone as good-for-nothing, you mean that they are lazy and irresponsible. Ruth's father was a rich, charming, but good-for-nothing man. He lived with his alcoholic mother and her good-for-nothing boyfriend in a trailer park. Note: You can also call a person a good-for-nothing. She called him `a lazy, deceitful good-for-nothing'.

good-for-nothing

1. mod. worthless. (Usually having to do with a person.) Let’s get rid of this good-for-nothing car right now.

2. n. a worthless person. (Also a rude term of address.) Tell the good-for-nothing to leave.

References in periodicals archive ?

School of Rock (Richard Linklater) A good-for-nothing layabout makes a bunch of school kids hip to the transformative power of rock 'n' roll, in the kind of smartly crafted mainstream comedy we thought no one knew how to make anymore.

Film

Oh, yes, wildlife--like birds, or alligators, or those clumsy good-for-nothing manatees.

America's least wanted: animal factories. (The Sierra Club Bulletin: news for members)

Out satirist Maney (The Case of the Good-For-Nothing Girlfriend) comes up with a zany spoof.

Divinely inspired: the gloriously transgressive drag star returns, as seen by friends and his mom. (Music / Books)

By issuing a report which adds this good-for-nothing creature to its endangered species list but sidesteps whether its numbers have truly declined, and usurping the role of the Army Corps of Engineers, state and local agencies (who have authority over the wetlands), the Fish & Wildlife Service makes the Endangered Species Act into a travesty that merely lends fuel to efforts to dismantle the Act in its entirety.

Endangered Species Act can be grim fairy tale

In 1826 he published his most important prose work, Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts (Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing ), which, with its combination of the dreamlike and the realistic, is considered a high point of Romantic fiction.

Eichendorff, Joseph, Baron (Freiherr) von

Of course, we might have gone for him just pounding the heads of stubborn jeepney drivers and his good-for-nothing traffic enforcers instead; but what the heck-we will take any possible solution in any form or shape it comes.

Welcome solutions to traffic jams at Edsa intersections

We have given our country to these good-for-nothing political parties in a platter to do whatever they want to do with Pakistan.

Change is not easy

Lazy nothing Mick To suggest it is welfare, rather than personal greed, which led Philpott to become what he is is nonsense and dangerous nonsense at that, playing as it does into the hands of those who believe anyone on benefits is a lazy good-for-nothing.

Scrounger Mick in a sub-class of his own

40pm In the last of the series, Sheree Murphy and Dominic Littlewood revisit families that the show has helped to find out whether the good-for-nothing builders who ruined their homes were ever brought to justice.

HIGHLIGHTS

The marriage lasted three years, when I finally came to my senses and left my lazy, good-for-nothing husband.

Dr Miriam: In no rush to reveal my past

Up until now, Paul has been an unrepentant skirt-chaser, known in his small, North Carolina mill town as a good-for-nothing jerk with little focus or ambition.