Noun

(en noun)

A person who begs.

* , chapter=13

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=“[…] They talk of you as if you were Croesus—and I expect the beggars sponge on you unconscionably.” And Vickers launched forth into a tirade very different from his platform utterances. He spoke with extreme contempt of the dense stupidity exhibited on all occasions by the working classes.}}

* 1983 , Stanley Rosen, Plato’s Sophist: The Drama of Original & Image , St. Augustine’s Press, p. 62:

Odysseus has returned to his home disguised as a beggar .

A person suffering from extreme poverty.

* 1883 , :

I'm to be a poor, crawling beggar , sponging for rum, when I might be rolling in a coach!

Noun

(en noun)

(Australia, slang, obsolete) A pimp, a man living off the earnings of a harlot. 1966 , Sidney J. Baker, The Australian Language'', second edition, chapter VI, section 3, page 129—''mentions an 1882 record of the "pimp" usage

* 1997 , Barbara Ann Sullivan, The Politics of Sex: Prostitution and Pornography in Australia since 1945 , page 30,

This was the bludger' or, in American parlance, the pimp, a man who lived on the earnings of prostitution. He was often the husband or boyfriend of a prostitute and could be actively involved in protecting or touting for the prostitute. Parliamentarians described the ' bludger as ‘the most detestable wretch on the face of the earth’ and as a man ‘worthy of no respect whatsoever’ (NSWPD 31:1675).

(Australia, NZ, slang, derogatory) A person who avoids working, or doing their share of work, a loafer, a hanger-on, one who does not pull their weight.

* 2005 , , Parliamentary Debates: House of Representatives: Ofiicial Hansard , Volume 270, page 84,

If she is doing the work of two parents because her husband has died or left her or is violent and has driven her and the kids from home, then suddenly she is a bludger .