Lubber
noun ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A clumsy or lazy person. archaic
"[T]hree of the boys, of whom Mr. Hector was sometimes one, used to come in the morning as his humble attendants, and carry him [Johnson] to school. […] The purfly, sand-blind lubber and blubber, with his open mouth, and face of bruised honeycomb; yet already dominant, imperial, irresistible!"
- 2 an inexperienced sailor; a sailor on the first voyage wordnet
- 3 An inexperienced or novice sailor; a landlubber.
- 4 an awkward stupid person wordnet
- 5 An eastern lubber grasshopper (Romalea microptera). Southern-US
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- 6 Alteration of rubber. South-Asia
Example
More examples"[T]hree of the boys, of whom Mr. Hector was sometimes one, used to come in the morning as his humble attendants, and carry him [Johnson] to school. […] The purfly, sand-blind lubber and blubber, with his open mouth, and face of bruised honeycomb; yet already dominant, imperial, irresistible!"
Etymology
From Middle English, perhaps from Old French lobeor (“swindler”), or of Scandinavian origin, compare dialectal Swedish lubber. The grasshopper was likely so called after sense 1 (“a clumsy or lazy person”).
Related phrases
More for "lubber"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.