Now chiefly Sc. Also 7 -lowper, 8 -looper. [ad. Du. landlooper (= MHG. lantloufære, G. landläufer), f. land LAND sb. + loopen to run: see LEAP v. Cf. LANDLEAPER.]
1. One who runs up and down the land; a vagabond; fig. † a renegade; an adventurer.
15[?]. trans. Bull Pope Martin (c. 1417), in Foxe, A. & M. (1583), 648/2. Certaine Archheretickes haue risen and sprong vp … being landlopers, schismatikes, and seditious persons.
1580. Hollyband, Treas. Fr. Tong, Vn villotier, a lande loper, a runnagate.
a. 1605. Polwart, Flyting w. Montgomerie, 757. Land lowper, light skowper, ragged rowper like a raven.
1622. Bacon, Hen. VII., 114. Hee [Perkin Warbeck] had beene from his Child-hood such a Wanderer, or (as the King called him) such a Land-loper.
1642. Howell, For. Trav. (Arb.), 57. Such Travellers as these may bee termed Land-lopers, as the Dutchman saith, rather than Travellers.
1681. W. Robertson, Phraseol. Gen. (1693), 799. A Land-loper, prædo.
1701. C. Wolley, Jrnl. New York (1860), 19. The materials of this Journal have laid by me several years expecting that some Landlooper or other in those parts would have done it more methodically.
1816. Scott, Antiq., xiii. This High-German land-louper, Dousterswivel.
1855. Motley, Dutch Rep., IV. iii. (1865), 596. Bands of land-loupers had been employed … to set fire to villages and towns in every direction.
Comb. 1787. Burns, Lett. to W. Nicol, 1 June. My land-lowper-like stravaguin.
† 2. = LAND-LUBBER. Obs.
1694. Motteux, Rabelais, V. xviii. We lay by and run adrift, that is in a Landlopers phrase, we temporis’d it.
a. 1700. B. E., Dict. Cant. Crew, Land-lopers or Land-lubbers, Fresh-water Seamen so called by the true Tarrs.
1725. in New Cant. Dict.
