Lord

subs. (common).—1.  See quots.: cf. LADY.

  FRENCH SYNONYMS.  Un bombé (= a crump); une bobosse (popular: bosse = hump); porter sa malle; une boulendos (= hunchback); un bosmar (popular); un Mayeux; un moule-à-melon (popular); un amoureux (popular); un porte-balle (popular); un loucheur de l’épaule (= i.e., a person who squints with his shoulder).

  GERMAN SYNONYMS.  Asterwitz; Pienk (Bavarian: Pünk = a bundle or protuberance).

  SPANISH SYNONYMS.  Brijindobio (Sp. gypsy); paldumo (Sp. gypsy); brijibio.

  c. 1696.  B. E., A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew, s.v. LORD, a very crooked, deformed, or ill-shapen Person.

  1725.  A New Canting Dictionary, s.v.

  1751.  SMOLLETT, Peregrine Pickle, xxviii. Who … was … on account of his hump, distinguished by the title of ‘my LORD.’

  1785.  GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v. LORD.

  1826.  LAMB, Essays, ‘A Popular Fallacy That a Deformed Person Is a LORD.’ We do not find that that monarch [Richard III.] conferred any such lordships as here pretended.

  1827.  TODD, Johnson’s Dictionary, s.v. LORD. A ludicrous title given by the vulgar to a hump-backed person; traced, however, to the Greek λορδος, crooked.

  1864.  Athenæum, 29 Oct., No. 1931. On the Greek origin of LORD, as applied to those who are vulgarly called ‘hunchbacks,’ Mr. Hotten is silent.

  1886.  BESANT, The World Went Very Well Then, iii. He was, in appearance, short and bent, with rounded shoulders, and with a hump (which made the boys call him My LORD).

  2.  In pl. (Winchester College).—The first eleven.

  3.  See LORD OF THE MANOR. DRUNK AS A LORD (PRINCE, or EMPEROR), phr. (common).—Very drunk.

  1653.  MIDDLETON, The Spanish Gipsy, iv. 1. Al. … Water thy wine,— San. [sings] And DRINK LIKE A LORD.

  1678.  COTTON, Virgil Travestie, in Works (1725), Bk. iv. p. 72.

  1719.  D’URFEY, Wit and Mirth; or Pills to Purge Melancholy, iv. 17. For our Squire, we fear, is AS DRUNK AS A LORD.

  1731.  COFFEY, The Devil to Pay, Sc. 2. Job. By my Troth, I am always sharp set towards Punch, and, am now come with a firm Resolution, tho’ but a poor Cobler, to be as richly DRUNK AS A LORD; I am a true English Heart, and look upon Drunkenness as the best Part of the Liberty of the Subject.

  1734.  FIELDING, The Intriguing Chambermaid, ii. 6. What is the reason scoundrels, that you dare disturb gentlemen, who are getting as DRUNK AS LORDS.

  1853.  THACKERAY, Barry Lyndon, xviii. 252. She ran screaming through the galleries, and I, as TIPSY AS A LORD, came staggering after.

  THE LORD KNOWS WHAT, phr. (colloquial).—‘Heaps’; plenty more; all sorts of things.

  1691–2.  Gentlemen’s Journal, March, p. 3. Here’s Novels, and New-Town Adventures … and the LORD KNOWS WHAT not.