Sunday Word: Scobberlotcher

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scobberlotcher
noun:
(Archaic, rare) An idle person, one who never works hard

Examples:

Dr. Kettle, when he scolded at the idle young boies of his colledge, he used these names, viz. Turds, Tarrarags (these were the worst sort, rude rakells), Rascal-Jacks, Blindcinques, Scobberlotchers (these did no hurt, were sober, but went idleing about the grove with their hands in their pocketts, and telling the number of the trees there, or so). (John Aubrey, Brief Lives)

“Good-morrow, Master Richard!” hailed the man, in a voice that matched his person. “What! not abroad yet, thou bed-worm, thou scobberlotcher!” and leaning down rolled a snowball in his massive hands, but desisted at the last moment from throwing it at Dick’s window lest it should enter by mistake the adjoining room, where his father and mother slept. (Cecil Day Lewis, Dick Willoughby)

Origin:

The first recorder of this strange word was the antiquarian John Aubrey, who wrote in his Brief Lives about Dr Ralph Kettell, who had been President of Trinity College, Oxford, between 1599 and 1643 ... The Oxford English Dictionary points, tentatively, to two old words as possible antecedents. One is the eastern English regional scopperloit, a time of idleness (perhaps from Dutch leuteren, to idle, the source of English loiter). The other is the verb scoterlope, to wander aimlessly. (World Wide Words)