Left in the lurch

… but what is a lurch? To lurch is to stumble or walk in an unsteady way, but what is a lurch where one might be left? If you were left there, would someone send a lurcher dog to find you? Is that how the dog got its name, as a finder of lurchers and those who have been left there?

Apparently lurch was originally lurk, which means to hang around, waiting in possibly a sinister manner. Lurk comes from lurken, which comes from lorchen in Middle English and was first used in the fifteenth century. There was some thought that the word was derived from lich, as in lych gate, and the phrase comes from brides who were jilted at the altar and so left in the lurch… I guess bridegrooms could be similarly disappointed and left lurking in the lich, left in the lurch. However such thoughts are wrong, lich/lych and lurch are not related. Another suggestion is that lurch comes from lourche or lorch, an old card game; there is still a term used in cribbage, a lurch position. This lurch comes from old Dutch and a German dialect meaning ‘left’ as in sinister…

But really, who knows?I’m sure many words which are now the same had completely different origins, and similarly two completely different words may have once had the very same origin…. One thing I am pretty cure of, lurch, lich, lych, lourche, lorch, have no connection with lichen.