the.com/absentee
Present enough to claim the title, absent enough to dodge the work.
means A person who is supposed to be present — at work, school, voting, owning property — but isn't there.
from From Latin absens/absentem, 'being away,' the present participle of abesse ('to be away from'), built from ab- ('away') plus esse ('to be'). English absentee emerged in the 1500s with a legal flavor, first used for landlords who owned estates — often in Ireland — but lived elsewhere, collecting rents while never setting foot on the land. That '-ee' ending, borrowed from legal French usage (as in 'employee' or 'payee'), marks someone on the receiving end of a status rather than an action — here, the dubious status of being officially accounted for while bodily elsewhere.
- origin
- from absent plus the suffix for the one who does it
- ballot use
- lets you vote without showing up to vote
- landlord type
- owns the building, never meets the leak
- irony
- the noun form of someone defined by not being there