English

Adjective

leisured

1. Having leisure, having time that need not be dedicated to work.
   • 1914, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Valley of Fear, Part 2, Chapter 1,

     The iron and coal valleys of the Vermissa district were no resorts for the leisured or the cultured. Everywhere there were stern signs of the crudest battle of life, the rude work to be done, and the rude, strong workers who did it.

   • 1961, V. S. Naipaul, A House for Mr Biswas, Vintage International, 2001, Part Two, Chapter 4,

     They had become a superior, leisured caste.

   • 2014, Robin Lane Fox, “The rich heritage of British working-class gardens,” Financial Times, 28 March, 2014,

     It is a frightful myth that the love of beauty is only to be found in leisured, educated people.

   The leisured class may produce great advances in the arts, or it may fritter away its time.

2. Leisurely, filled with leisure.
   • 1893, John Davidson, “St Valentine’s Eve” in Fleet Street Eclogues, London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane, p. 20,

     And brooding thus on my ephemeral flowers

     That smoulder in the wilderness, I thought,

     By envy sore distraught,

     Of amaranths that burn in lordly bowers,

     Of men divinely blessed with leisured hours,

   • 1905, G. K. Chesterton, “The Eccentric Seclusion of the Old Lady” in The Club of Queer Trades,

     “All right,” said Basil, rising also and seating himself in a leisured way in an armchair.

   • 1972, “Leviathans,” Time, 3 January, 1972,

     Everything that Brinnin writes about is defunct. The big liners were killed, of course, by the jet plane, a device that condensed the leisured misery of a five-day crossing into seven hours of concentrated nullity or wretchedness.

   • 2016, Brennavan Sritharan, “Ordinary Beauty: Revisiting Saul Leiter’s pioneering images,” British Journal of Photography, 26 January, 2016,

     While his career spanned a time when quintessential New York street photography was defined as swift, sharp and precise, Leiter’s leisured, impressionist style went against the grain.

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