3 Matching Annotations
- Mar 2024
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When Byrd identified the Carolinians as residents of “Lubberland,” hedrew upon a familiar English folktale that featured one “Lawrence Lazy,”born in the county of Sloth near the town of Neverwork.
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Evenbefore his betrayal, though, he felt little identification with the colonists,writing that North Carolinians were the most “cowardly Blockheads[another word for lubber] that ever God created & must be used likenegro[e]s if you expect any good of them.”29
blockheads as a synonym for lubber
This gives new meaning to the use of "blockhead" in Charles Schultz' Peanuts (usually Lucy in reference to Charlie Brown).
Recall Samuel Johnson's (1709-1784) aphorism:
“No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”
Definition from Webster's Dictionary (1913):
Block"head` (?), n. [Block + head.] A stupid fellow; a dolt; a person deficient in understanding.
"The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head." —Pope.
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“lazy lubbers,” meaning stupid, clumsy oafs,the word that came to describe the vagrant poor of Carolina.11
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