Ah, finally! This one I know about - although not its absolute origin as a word. I note in the dictionary that, as tsuwm suggests, one meaning is a fat, lazy fellow.

"Lubber" has two other meanings, both nautical as you've probably guessed. The first (and relatively innocuous one in this case) is the lubber line on the face of a compass, used to keep a bearing between the compass needle and the direction the boat is actually headed in.

The second (and more interesting) meaning refers to a hole or hatch up through the "top" (a platform of varying width) which surrounded the mast on a square-rigged sailing ship. The top is/was used for two purposes. One, it provides an anchor for the shrouds (lines that hold up various parts of the mast and yards) - its main purpose - and, two, the tops were used for lookout purposes, usually being flat.

The hole or hatch I referred to was next to the mast, and was the easy way to get up the mast to the platform. "Real" sailors, however, went up the shrouds attached to the outside of the top and over the edge onto the top, which meant they were hanging backwards from the vertical during the last part of the climb. Lubbers were so called because they were people who couldn't face the more-than-vertical climb on the shrouds and used the lubber's hole to get to the tops. By extension, landlubbers were useless, earthbound parasites.



The idiot also known as Capfka ...