Lamp-black. So called because this pigment was at first obtained by burning resinous matter over the flame of a lamp.
Lancaster. The Roman Lunecastra, or fortified camp on the Lune.
Lancaster Gun. After the name of its inventor.
Lancastrians. During the Wars of the Roses the partisans of the House of Lancaster in the contest for the crown of England as opposed to the House of York.
Lancers. This dance received its name from a company of Lancers who went through the evolutions of a quadrille on horseback about the year 1836.
Landau. After Landau in Germany, where it was first made.
Landes. Expresses the French for heaths. The people of this marshy and, in parts sandy, district walk on long stilts.
Landgrave. The Anglicised form of the German landgraf, count, a ground landlord.
Land o’ Cakes. Scotland, which has always been celebrated for its oatmeal cakes.
Land of Green Ginger. A square at Hull where, as popularly thought, green ginger was anciently landed from the river and sold in open market. The name is, however, a corruption of “Greenhinger,” being the land owned by Moses Greenhinger, a boat builder, who lived in Whitefriargate in the seventeenth century. This is proved by a letter of Sir Willoughby Hickman, a candidate for the borough in 1685. Therein he states that a coach took him from the waterside to the George Inn, “at the corner of the land of Moses Greenhinger.”