Lurdane

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An idle, sluggish person who shirks work and is of little use to anyone
2. A lazy loafer, an old-fashioned term for someone who will not work and wastes their time
3. Someone habitually slothful and worthless, a drone who contributes nothing through effort

Etymology: The most striking part of this word's history is the folk story attached to it, which the Puritan writer Joseph Caryl recorded in 1666. In his commentary on the Book of Job, he describes a lazy idler as one "we call proverbably a Lurdane, from the lazy Danes," who once lorded it over England, ate and drank in well-stocked houses, and would not labour. The explanation is a neat piece of ethnic mockery, but it does not hold up: the word cannot have come from the Danes, since Caryl's own 1666 text is the earliest record of the connection and the word was already in use before it was linked to them. The real source is Middle French "lourdin", meaning "dullard", formed from "lourd", "heavy". The sense of a heavy, slow, stupid person is what gave the English word its meaning of a sluggish idler. The Danish story was a way of explaining the word after the fact, using a convenient ethnic target, rather than a record of how it arose.

Synonyms: lout, layabout, loafer, slacker, idler

Antonyms: go-getter, worker