Word of the Day

malinger \muh-LING-guhr\, intransitive verb:
To feign or exaggerate illness or inability in order to avoid duty or work.

Because he twice slapped battle-stressed soldiers in Sicily who, he thought, were merely malingering, he was denied a major command in the Normandy landings.
--Bernard Knox, "Scorched Earth," New York Times, November 14, 1999

It is impossible to determine exactly what inspired Mary's various symptoms, but her own and other family members' letters suggest that her suffering may have been a combination of hypochondria, conscious histrionics and malingering, and unconscious rebellion against her father.
--Caroline Fraser, God's Perfect Child

My specialty is subjecting the data I obtain to successive mathematical corrective formulas to filter the truly psychotic from those who are malingering.
--Barbara Kirwin, Ph.D, The Mad, the Bad, and the Innocent

Malinger derives from French malingre, "sickly," perhaps from Old French mal, "badly" + heingre, "lean, thin."