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I sat for a school exam just early today and the passage is about the sea. And I found the word landlubber and 3 question asked about the topic 'landlubber'.

I remembered clearly that Tintin was called landlubber many times by Captain Haddock in the comics and most of the TV series episodes. So I simply wroted the answer as 'Landlubber is a person that is land-bound, who envies to become a sailor' as one question asked 'Who is this 'landlubber'?

Well, maybe Tintin saved a few marks for my exam.

Ha!

That's pretty good! It's surprising when a tv series or a film can help with exams, especially if they happen to be in the topic.

Great stuff mate! It's good you didn't put 'someone who lubbs (loves) land (lol)'.

Indeed, as "lubber" in this case is not related to "lover." See this page for an explanation.

I know lubber is not related to lover. It was a bad attempt at a joke.

Hmmm... I don't find his (the writer of the little article, not Tintin Quiz) derivation particularly convincing: there is another very similar now-archaic word "landlouper", meaning "someone who crosses land", which also could be the root of the word we have today. "Loup" is still used for crossing, especially by jumping, in Scotland.

Well, thanks for the help.

Just wanna let you all know that I did pass my exam thanks to Tintin.

He saved me 2 marks and I got a 29 out of 50 marks. The other 2 'saving' marks comes from my excellent use of proper english.

And just to let you know the difficulty of the test, only 5 people from my class pass, including myself.

Congrats on the test, tintinspartan!
I think Captain Haddock can be a definite influence on one's vocabulary.

Indeed! He has caused me to flip through the dictionaries many times!

I'm not sure I agree Jock. A bit of further digging around the 'net appears to back up the link Tintin Quiz gave: 1362, "big, clumsy, stupid fellow who lives in idleness," from lobre, earlier lobi "lazy lout," related to lob, and probably of Scand. origin.

The 'clumsy' aspect would certainly fit with how land dwellers moved about on a ship before they got their 'sea legs'. And I guess seamen had to work hard and were quite fit, so land people probably did seem 'lazy' to them.

There is also an earlier variant, "abbey-lubber", which was originally applied to monks, but later anybody who grew fat and lazy living from the charity of the church.