Sc. Also 6 lawrie, loury, 6–8 lowry. [Short for LAURENCE1.]
1. The fox; used as a quasi-proper name.
1500–20. Dunbar, Poems, xxxii. 16. The tod … wes ane lusty reid haird lowry.
1728. Ramsay, Fox & Rat, 27. The Monarch pleas’d with Lowry, wha durst gloom?
1835. Laird of Logan (1841), 163. A’ my customers hae been worrying at me like as many jowlers in the neck o’poor tod lowrie.
1885. ‘S. Mucklebackit,’ Rhymes, 91. As sheep when lowrie tod they see, Man, wife, and wean, in panic flee!
2. A crafty person; a ‘fox’; a hypocrite.
1567. Gude & Godlie Ball. (S.T.S.), 209. Had not that blissit bairne bene borne,… Lowreis, zour lyues had been forlorne.
1571. Satir. Poems Reform., xxix. 21. Ȝitt I beleiff ols mony myndis thochte, ha, loury, ha, ha!
1583. Leg. Bp. St. Androis, 55. Men heiring tell how Lowrie landit, The congregatione him commandit To serve a kirk and keip a cure.
