Word.ws English Dictionary

lubberly

lubberly adjective: clumsy and stupid; resembling a lubber (an inexperienced person).

Adjective

lubberly (comparative more lubberly, superlative most lubberly)

  1. Clumsy and stupid; resembling a lubber (an inexperienced person).
    • a great lubberly boyc. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    • Ponocrates and Eudemon burst out in a laughing so heartily, that they had almost split with it, and given up the ghost, in rendering their souls to God: even just as Crassus did, seeing a lubberly ass eat thistles;1693, Thomas Urquhart, translation of Gargantua by Rabelais, Chapter XX
  2. Lacking in seamanship; of or suitable to a landlubber who is new to being at sea and unfamiliar with the ways of a sailor.
    • "Do not use such a lubberly expression, my dear Rose, if you respect your father's profession. On a vessel is a new-fangled Americanism, that is neither fish, flesh, nor red-herring, as we sailors say,— neither English nor Greek."1848, James Fenimore Cooper, “Captain Spike, Or The Islets of the Gulf”, in Bentley's Miscellany, page 19

Adverb

lubberly (comparative more lubberly, superlative most lubberly)

  1. In the manner of a landlubber.
    • I'm not ignorant of these matters, having been many years at sea—and seamen, you must know, are curious in knots; I cannot endure to see anything done lubberly.1839, Matthew Henry Barker, Hamilton King, page 105

Forms of lubberly

Adjective
comparativemore lubberly
superlativemost lubberly
Adverb
comparativemore lubberly
superlativemost lubberly

Origin of lubberly

From lubber + -ly.

Words formed from lubberly

Questions about lubberly

What does lubberly mean?
Lubberly means clumsy and stupid; resembling a lubber (an inexperienced person).
What part of speech is lubberly?
Lubberly can be an adjective or an adverb.

Words near lubberly in the dictionary

  1. lubber's holes
  2. lubberland
  3. lubberlands
  4. lubberlike
  5. lubberliness
  6. lubberly
  7. lubbers
  8. Lubbes
  9. lubblier
  10. lubbliest
  11. lubbly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lubberly (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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