also land-leaper and land-loper, subs. (old).—A vagabond; one who fled the country for crime or debt: also (nautical) a landsman, in varying degrees of contempt, for incapacity in general or uselessness as sailors in particular. Fr. un jus de cancre; un terrien; or un failli chien de terrien.

1

  1362.  LANGLAND, Piers Plowman, B, xv. 207. For he ne is nouȝte in lolleres · ne in LANDE-LEPERES hermytes.

2

  1592.  NEWTON, Tryall of a Man’s owne Selfe [NARES]. Whether the governors of the commonwealth have suffered palmesters, fortune-tellers, stage-players, sawce-boxes, enterluders, puppit-players, loyterers, vagabonds, LANDLEAPERS, and such like cozening make-shifts.

3

  1578.  LYTE, trans. Dodoens’s A Niewe Herball, or Historie of Plantes, 348. Wherfore these LANDLEAPERS, Roges, and ignorant Asses.

4

  1621.  BURTON, The Anatomy of Melancholy (ed. 1893), i. 367. Let Mariners learn Astronomy; Merchants’ Factors study Arithmetick … LANDLEAPERS Geography.

5

  1622.  BACON, History of the Reign of King Henry VII. [ed. SPEDDING], vi. 133. Thirdly, he had been from his childhood such a wanderer, or (as the King called it) such a LANDLOPER, as it was extreme hard to hunt out his nest and parents.

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  1650.  HOWELL, Familiar Letters [NARES]. You are sure where to find me, wheras I was a LANDLOPER as the Dutchman saith, a wanderer, and subject to incertain removes, and short sojourns in divers places before.

7

  1671.  C. SHADWELL, The Fair Quaker of Deal, i. And the LAND-LUBBER (for he is no sailor) had the impudence to tell me he would not be my boy.

8

  c. 1696.  B. E., A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew, s.v. LAND-LOPERS or LAND-LUBBERS, Freshwater Seamen so called by the true Tarrs; also Vagabonds that Beg and Steal through the Country.

9

  1696.  Nomenclator. Erro…. Rodeur, coureur, vagabond. A roge: a LAND LEAPER: a vagabond: a runagate.

10

  1725.  A New Canting Dictionary, s.v.

11

  1785.  GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v. LAND LOPERS or LAND LUBBERS, vagabonds lurking about the country, who subsist by pilfering.

12

  17[?].  Ballad, ‘One Fine Morning’ (The Mermaid), Refrain.

        Three jolly sailor-boys up on the mast,
And the LAND-LUBBERS down below.

13

  1811.  GROSE and CLARKE, Lexicon Balatronicum, s.v.

14

  1884.  Graphic, 5 April, p. 338, col. 2. The veriest LAND-LUBBER cannot fail to become something of a sailor after reading it.

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