Leipsic. Expresses the Slavonic for linden or lime tree town, from lipa, lime-tree.
Leman Street. Properly “Lemon Street,” from a wharf at the Thames side, where, before the construction of the docks, lemons were landed and sold.
Lemon Sole. The species of sole found on the south coast of England; really a mud sole, from the Latin lima, mud.
Lent. From the Anglo-Saxon lencten, the spring. The word has the same origin as “lengthen,” since at this season of the year the lengthening of the days becomes perceptible.
Lent Crocking. A popular old-time diversion of the schoolboys on Shrove Tuesday. The ringleader, having knocked at a house door and recited a garbled set of verses, to the effect that he had come a-shroving, his companions kept up an incessant din with old saucepans and kettles until they were paid to go away.
Leonine Verses. Those which rhyme both in the middle and at the end of each line, so called after Leoninus, a canon of St Victor in Paris midway in the twelfth century.
Let the Cat out of the Bag. To disclose a trick unwittingly. The illusion is to a very old device at country fairs of selling a cat for a sucking pig. One pig only was exposed to view; all the others were supposed to be ready tied up for carrying away. If, on occasion, a purchaser insisted on untying the sack before paying for it, the cat leapt out, and the fraud was discovered. As to the other victims who had taken away theirs on trust, they were forced to admit, because their sack contained no sucking pig, that they had been “sucked in.”
Levant. An Italian term for the Orient or East--i.e. all those parts of the Mediterranean eastward of Italy. The word is also used in the sense of to depart, and a defaulter was said to have levanted, or gone to the Levant. This was in allusion to the “Grand Tour” which all scions of the nobility were expected to make on reaching their majority.
Levee. A French word applied to a royal reception, from lever, arising, because in former times such a function took place in the King’s bed-chamber at the hour of rising.
Levellers. The primitive Radicals or Socialists of the time of Charles I. and long afterwards; their plea was that all men should be on a common level in regard to office-seeking. Also the original name of the “White Boys” in Ireland, who commenced their agrarian outrages by levelling the hedges and fences on enclosed lands.