• (RP) IPA: /ləʊf/
• (America) IPA: /loʊf/

loaf (plural loaves)

1. (also loaf of bread) A block of bread after baking.
2. Any solid block of food, such as meat or sugar.
3. (Cockney rhyming slang) Shortened from "loaf of bread", the brain or the head (mainly in the phrase use one's loaf).
   • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, “VIII and XII”, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, OCLC 1227855 ↗:

     It is frequently said of Bertram Wooster that he is a man who can think on his feet, and if the necessity arises he can also use his loaf when on all fours. [...] “Why didn't the idiot tell her not to open it?” “It was his first move. ‘I've found a letter from you here, precious,’ she said. ‘On no account open it, angel,’ he said. So of course she opened it.” She pursed the lips, nodded the loaf, and ate a moody piece of crumpet. “So that's why he's been going about looking like a dead fish.”

4. A solid block of soap, from which standard bars are cut.

• (head, all slang) bonce, noddle, nut

• French: baguette, miche, pain
• German: Laib, Laib Brot, Brot
• Italian: pagnotta, pan carrè, pane in cassetta
• Portuguese: pão
• Russian: буха́нка
• Spanish: pan, hogaza

• Spanish: pan

• Italian: capoccia
• Russian: коча́н
• Spanish: mollera, testa (slang)

• French: savonnette
• Italian: panetto

loaf (loafs, present participle loafing; past and past participle loafed)

1. (intransitive) To do nothing, to be idle.

   loaf about, loaf around.

   • 2015, Elizabeth Royte, Vultures Are Revolting. Here’s Why We Need to Save Them., National Geographic (December 2015)

     They don’t (often) kill other animals, they probably form monogamous pairs, and we know they share parental care of chicks, and loaf and bathe in large, congenial groups.

2. (Cockney rhyming slang) To headbutt, (from loaf of bread)

• idle, laze, lounge

• French: paresser
• German: nichts tun, herumlungern, rumhängen (colloquial)
• Italian: oziare, bighellare, girovagare, vagabondare, trastullarsi
• Portuguese: vadiar
• Russian: бездельничать
• Spanish: holgazanear, estar a la bartola, golfear