a. and sb. Also 9 laggart. [f. LAG v.1 + -ARD.]
A. adj. Lagging, hanging back, loitering, slow. Chiefly of living things, their actions, and attributes. Occas. of days, time, etc.
1702. Rowe, Tamerlane, IV. i. Tho’ Laggard in the Race … I will pursue the shining Path thou tread’st.
1706. [Ward], Wooden World Dissected (1708), 31. [The press-gang lieutenant] beats up all Quarters … and drives the laggard Dog along the Streets, with as much noise and Bustle as Butchers do Swine to Smithfield.
1713. J. Hughes, Ode to Creator World, 4. Decrepit Winter, laggard in the Dance … A heavy Season does maintain.
1747. Collins, Passions, 112. Than all which charms this laggard age.
1814. Scott, Lord of Isles, IV. xviii. And Lennox cheer’d the laggard hounds.
1842. Manning, Serm., xvi. (1848), I. 235. Ours is a … laggard obedience at the best.
1871. Palgrave, Lyr. Poems, 91. My heart outruns these laggart limbs.
1889. Jessopp, Coming of Friars, iv. 183. The Angel of Death moves at no laggard pace.
B. sb. One who lags behind; a lingerer, loiterer.
1808. Scott, Marm., V. xii. A laggard in love, and a dastard in war.
1836. W. Irving, Astoria, I. 89. He meant to let the laggards off for a long pull and a hearty fright.
1860. Rawlinson, Herodotus, IV. IX. lxxvii. 449. They declared themselves to deserve a fine, as laggarts.
1876. Tait, Rec. Adv. Phys. Sci., x. (ed. 2), 259. Formed of the laggards, as it were, which have been thrown out of the race.
Hence Laggard v., to play the laggard. Also Laggardism, Langgardly adv., Laggardness.
1835. Pusey, Lett. to Newman, in Liddon, etc. Life Pusey (1893), II. i. 8. [It] hardly seems to come heartily, because it has not come before, but comes laggardly.
1865. Carlyle, Fredk. Gt., XV. viii. (1872), VI. 40. Austrians mainly are gone laggarding with D’Ahremberg up the Rhine.
1865. Sat. Rev., XIX. 756/1. The insolent contempt of labour on the one hand, and the petty aping of laggardism and polite inanity on the other.
1869. Goulburn, Purs. Holiness, i. 10. That laggardness of will.
