Lurdane and lurdan and lunkhead and lummox and lummakin

Whenever I see or say the word "lummox," I think of Lewis Carroll's poem Jabberwocky, where the boy, who is told to watch out for the Jabberwock, finally confronts it with his "vorpal blade:"

"One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back."

That is, the word galumphing to me suggests the kind of movement that a big galoot might make, a sort of galloping or bobbing or, to use a great portmanteau word, lolloping back to his father. But now we are in the verbal field of lummoxes, so let's meet them. The OED tells us that the word lummox is of obscure origin, but means "a large, heavy, or clumsy person; an ungainly or stupid lout." Thus, we are right at home with the concepts of the previous essay. But the word is only first attested from 1825 (hundreds of years after lout made its initial appearance) in the sentence: "Look o' yin great lummox, lazing and lolloping about." Lollop seems to be a combination of loll and gallop. Thus a person who is "lolloping" is gently bobbing around or lazily and idly sitting in a languid state. It carries both the notion of sitting and moving. Later usages of lummox are amusing. From an 1854 sermon: "Man in his original state is little more than a big lummux of a baby." Most theologians have a slightly more positive take on Adam than that. Or, from 1919: "Oswald is a big fair-haired lummox that sings tenor in the Presbyterian choir," which seems to be an accurate take on most of the Presbyterian choirs I have known.

Although the Century agrees that a lummox is "an unwieldy, clumsy, stupid fellow," it compares it with lummakin (absent from the OED) and says that it probably untimately is connected with lump. The linguistic background for lump includes the German "lumpe" meaning "a ragamuffin" or "curmudgeon." Then, the Century says that lummakin means "heavy" or "awkward." I was able to find one literary quotation including lummakin. The Victorian children's writer Juliana Horatia Gatty (1841-85) achieved fame in the late 1870s and early 1880s through "Jackanapes" and "Laetus Sorte Mea," which one online article describes as "two patriotic and sentimental stories of ill-fated soldier heroes." I can almost hear the sap congealing into syrup. Nevertheless in one of her works, Jan of the Windmill, she has one of the characters say: "I wish I could read but time's past for me to go to school, Abel; and who'd teach a great lummakin vool like I his letters?" Pretty learned to use lummakin, I would say. Maybe this essay will lead to a revival of interest in her work. Probably not.

Lurdane

Interestingly enough, the Collegiate lists the word as lurdane, while both the OED and Century have entries under lurdan for the same word. I will reflect on this phenomenon in a future essay--a kind of essay I write when I am ready to throw out the whole idea of spelling because standardization seems to be impossible to achieve. To be fair to the Collegiate, however, the OED has about 20 spellings of the word, ranging from Lord-Danes to lourdeine and including lurdane as one of them. It can be used either as a noun or adjective, but the OED tells us that it is a "general term of opprobrium, reproach, or abuse, implying either dullness and incapacity, or idleness and rascality; a sluggard, vagabond, loafer." That seems to cover the bases, doesn't it? A person who is afflicted with the "disease of laziness" is said to be "fever-lurden." From as early as 1500: "I trow he was infecte certey/ With the faitour, or the fever lordeyn." And, to show that it isn't simply parents from the 21st century who are concerned about their kids, we have this quotation from 1547: "I had almoste forgotten the fever lurden, with the whiche manye..yonge persons bee sore infected nowe a dayes."

Back then to lurdan/lurdane. A 1529 quotation from John Rastell gives us all we need to know about the word's origin: "These Danys before were so proud, that they kept the husbondmen lyke vyleyns (villeins);..the husbondmen called them Lorde Dane, which word now we use in obprobrye, callyinge him that we rebuke Lurdayn." And because the overseers were usually the wealthy people, this 1603 quotation makes sense: "Some lur-daines that have wealth left by their ancestors, holde it a poynt of wisedome to rest theyr idle limmes and spare their bodies." The Century includes a few more choice words. A lurdan is a "blockhead; a stupid or useless person. Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie provides an endearing quotation: "As yet, for lacke of good civility and wholesome doctirnes, there was greater store of lewde lourdaines then of wise and learned Lords." Maybe that should be the title of my next book--"Lewd Lordaines and Learned Lords.."

Used adjectivally, lurdane means "wortheless, ill-bred, lazy," or, in the words of the Century, "blockish, heavy, stupid, useless." Tennyson used the word as an adjective: "In one [chamber],/ Red after revel, droned her lurdane knights/ Slumbering." Lurdanry, by the way, is singly attested in English and means "robbery" or "crime," even though I really like the sound of the word..

Concluding with Lunkhead

As might be expected, lunkhead is purely American. It only goes back to Huckleberry Finn, which was released in February 1885. "So the duke said these Arkansaw lunkheads couldn't come up to Shakespeare." Probably not. Thus a lunkhead is a blockhead, and someone who is lunkheaded is thickheaded or stupid. One of my friends in college, the captain of the Brown University Hockey team, used that word in describing the Yale defensemen he outskated when scoring a goal. After the game I asked him, "Did you think that you could break away from the defensemen?" And he responded, "Anyone could outskate those lunkheads." And, since he was an English major, I am sure he was citing pure Twain.

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