looby

Uncertain. Perhaps from lob (“a large piece, lump”) + -y.

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• Rhymes: -uːbi

looby (plural loobies)

1. (now rare, dialect) A large and awkward or clumsy person; an oaf.
   • 1791, James Boswell, Life of Johnson, Oxford, published 2008, page 1227:

     ‘Depend upon it, Sir, a savage, when he is hungry, will not carry about with him a looby of nine years old, who cannot help himself.’

   • 1872, George Eliot, Middlemarch, Book IV, chapter 35:

     Thus while I tell the truth about loobies, my reader's imagination need not be entirely excluded from an occupation with lords […] .

• booly