Chapter LOQUOT to LOUTEA of L by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

LOQUOT to LOUTEA

LOQUOT, LOQUAT, s. A sub-acid fruit, a native of China and Japan, which has been naturalised in India and in Southern Europe. In Italy it is called nespola giapponese (Japan medlar). It is Eriobotrya japonica, Lindl. The name is that used in S. China, lu-küh, pron. at Canton lukwat, and meaning ‘rush- orange.’ Elsewhere in China it is called pi-pa.

[1821.—“The Lacott a Chinese fruit, not unlike a plum, was produced also in great plenty (at Bangalore); it is sweet when ripe, and both used for tarts, and eaten as dessert.”—Hoole, Missions in Madras and Mysore, 2nd ed. 159.]

1878.—“… the yellow loquat peachskinned and pleasant, but prodigal of stones.”—Ph. Robinson, In My Indian Garden, 49.

c. 1880.—“A loquat tree in full fruit is probably a sight never seen in England before, but ‘the phenomenon’ is now on view at Richmond. (This was in the garden of Lady Parker at Stawell House.) We are told that it has a fine crop of fruit, comprising about a dozen bunches, each bunch being of eight or ten beautiful berries. …”—Newspaper cutting (source lost).

LORCHA s. A small kind of vessel used in the China coasting trade. Giles explains it as having a hull of European build, but the masts and sails Chinese fashion, generally with a European skipper and a Chinese crew. The word is said to have been introduced by the Portuguese from S. America (Giles, 81). But Pinto’s passage shows how early the word was used in the China seas, a fact which throws doubt on that view. [Other suggestions are that it is Chinese low-chuen, a sort of fighting ship, or Port. lancha, our launch (2 N. & Q. iii. 217, 236).]

1540.—“Now because the Lorch (lorcha), wherein Antonio de Faria came from Patana leaked very much, he commanded all his soldiers to pass into another better vessel … and arriving at a River that about evening we found towards the East, he cast anchor a league out at Sea, by reason his Junk … drew much water, so that fearing the Sands … he sent Christovano Borralho with 14 Soldiers in the Lorch up the River. …”—Pinto (orig. cap. xlii.), Cogan, p. 50.

„ “Cõ isto nos partemos deste lugar de Laito muyto embandeirados, com as gavias toldadas de paños de seda, et os juncos e lorchas cõ duas ordens de paveses por banda”—Pinto, ch. lviii. i.e. “And so we started from Laito all dressed out, the tops draped with silk, and the junks and lorchas with two tiers of banners on each side.”

1613.—“And they use smaller vessels called lorchas and lyolyo (?), and these never use more than 2 oars on each side, which serve both for rudders and for oars in the river traffic.”—Godinho de Eredia, f. 26v

1856.—“… Mr. Parkes reported to his superior, Sir John Bowring, at Hong Kong, the facts in connexion with an outrage which had been committed on a British-owned lorcha at Canton. The lorcha ‘Arrow,’ employed in the river trade between Canton and the mouth of the river, commanded by an English captain and flying an English flag, had been boarded by a party of Mandarins and their escort while at anchor near Dutch Folly.”—Boulger, H. of China, 1884, iii. 396.

LORY s. A name given to various brilliantly-coloured varieties of parrot, which are found in the Moluccas and other islands of the Archipelago. The word is a corruption of the Malay nuri, ‘a parrot’; but the corruption seems not to be very old, as Fryer retains the correct form. Perhaps it came through the French (see Luillier below). [Mr. Skeat writes: “Luri is hardly a corruption of nuri; it is rather a parallel form. The two forms appear in different dialects. Nuri may have been first introduced, and luri may be some dialectic form of it.”] The first quotation shows that lories were imported into S. India as early as the 14th century. They are still imported thither, where they are called in the vernacular by a name signifying ‘Five-coloured parrots.’ [Can. panchavarnagini.]

c. 1330.—“Parrots also, or popinjays, after their kind, of every possible colour, except black, for black ones are never found; but white all over, and green, and red, and also of mixed colours. The birds of this India seem really like the creatures of Paradise.”—Friar Jordanus, 29.

c. 1430.—“In Bandan three kinds of parrot are found, some with red feathers and a yellow beak, and some parti-coloured which are called Nori that is brilliant.”—Conti, in India in the XVth Cent., 17. The last words, in Poggio’s original Latin, are: “quos Noros appellant hoc est lucidos,” showing that Conti connected the word with the Pers. nur=“lux.”

1516.—“In these islands there are many coloured parrots, of very splendid colours; they are tame, and the Moors call them nure and they are much valued.”—Barbosa, 202.

1555.—“There are