dronage

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   rare: the state or condition of being a social drone, especially an idle or dependent person who lives on the work or resources of others

   The essay condemns inherited idleness as a life of dronage sustained by other people's labor.

Formed from drone + -age, literally the state or condition of being a drone. Drone first named the nonworking male bee and later, by metaphor, an idle person who lives on others' labor. The rare noun is recorded in Benjamin Jowett's nineteenth-century translation of Plato for the dependent condition produced by usury.

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