Erik Eckel

You likely give little thought to the words loiter and leisure. Were you to understand their histories, the etymologies might surprise you, however.

Author Cynthia Cruz brought this phenomenon, a subtle but insidious psychological barricade that complicates working class members’ efforts to join the middle class, to my attention. Know that, if you’re tempted to argue, her 2021 book The Melancholia Of Class packs some 14 pages of bibliographic information supporting her data, analysis and conclusions exploring the many systematized ways the working class is marginalized and often excluded.

Take, for example, the difference in the way we associate the terms loiter and leisure. Members of the working class, Cruz observes, are meant by definition to work and recover, then repeat the process. Laborers shouldn’t have time for leisure. They must work, after all. Working less means the working class suffers, such as by sacrificing health insurance and forgoing essentials. In fact, when the working class chooses leisure, its members appear lazy.

Only the middle- and upper-classes, Cruz points out, “have leisure built into their lives, in the form of [paid] vacations and summer or weekend homes, free evenings as a result of having the ability to hire nannies or babysitters, or simply by either not having to work, or not having to work as many jobs or hours as the working class as a result of their high salaries.”

“Even if the working class does somehow find a means to locate leisure time, this leisuring is often construed as loitering,” she continues. In exploring the two words’ etymologies, Cruz confirms the word loiter comes from the Middle Dutch word loteren, which means to lurk and is related to the word beggar. Whereas, she notes, the word leisure’s definition includes “opportunity afforded by freedom from necessary occupations.”

Her point? “Where ‘loiter’ signifies dereliction and the absence of work, with its relation to begging and lurking, ‘leisure’ represents the freedom of not having to work.”

We kind of just internalize and take these accepted definitions for granted. Whenever observing working class members not working, they are often seen as loitering. Signs are even posted to prevent laborers from taking brief rests together.

Yet, how many “No Loitering” signs have you seen at a local tennis, golf or yacht club? Not many, I’m guessing.