a. [f. LAND sb. + -LESS.]

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  1.  Not possessing land; having no landed property.

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c. 1000.  Laws of Æthelstan, II. c. 8, in Schmid, Gesetze, 136. Be landleasum mannum … ʓif hwylc landleas man folʓode on oðre scire.

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1540–1.  Elyot, Image Gov., 115. We shall neither haue usurour dwell in this citee, nor gentilmen landlesse.

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1602.  Shaks., Ham., I. i. 98. Young Fortinbras … Hath … Shark’d vp a List of Landlesse Resolutes.

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1638.  Brome, Antipodes, I. i. Wks. 1873, III. 234. As mad as landlesse Squire could bee.

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1814.  Scott, Ld. of Isles, III. xxxi. A landless prince, whose wandering life Is but one scene of blood and strife.

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1865.  Edin. Rev., CXXI. 36. Turned adrift landless and homeless.

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1878.  N. Amer. Rev., CXXVII. 102. The negro, poor, landless, and deserted by the North.

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  2.  Without land, void of land.

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1605.  Sylvester, Du Bartas, II. iii. III. Law, 1197. A Fruit-less, Flood-less, yea a Land-less Land.

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1870.  Morris, Earthly Par. (1870), I. 16. Risk dying in an unknown landless sea. Ibid. Within the landless waters of the west.

12

  Hence Landlessness.

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1848.  Morn. Chron., 11 July, 5/3. Their descendants have returned to their original landlessness.

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1851.  H. Melville, Whale, xxiii. 118. In landlessness alone resides the highest truth.

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