[LUBBER occurs in the 16th c. in this sense.] A sailor’s term of contempt for a landsman.
a. 1700. [see LAND-LOPER 2].
1752. Johnson, Rambler, No. 198, ¶ 11. My Uncle … bid me prepare myself against next year for no land lubber should touch his money.
1824. W. Irving, T. Trav. (1849), 417. There was many a land-lubber looked on that might much better have swung in his stead.
1875. R. F. Burton, Gorilla L., II. 15. The philosophic landlubber often wonders at the eternal restlessness of his naval brother-man.
1884. Pae, Eustace, 130. The service is not intended to pamper landlubbers, but to make smart seamen.
Hence Landlubberish, Landlubberly adjs.
1829. J. Wilson, in Blackw. Mag., XXVI. 912. Occasionally disfigured by landlubberish terms.
1860. Dickens, Lett., 4 Sept. (1880), II. 119. The costermongers in the street outside … have an earthy, and, as I may say, a landlubberly aspect.
1893. H. Vizetelly, Glances Back, I. viii. 166. My land-lubberly intelligence failed to grasp the proper meaning.
