LUNATION, the period of return of the moon (luna) to the same position relative to the sun; for example, from full moon to full moon. Its duration is 29.5305884 days.
LUNAVADA, a native state in India, in the Gujarat division of Bombay. Area, 388 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 63,967, showing a decrease of 28% in the decade, due to famine. The chief, whose title is maharana, is a Rajput of high lineage. Estimated revenue, £12,000; tribute, £1000. The capital is Lunavada town, said to have been founded in 1434; pop. (1901) 10,277.
LUNCHEON, in present usage the name given to a meal between breakfast and tea or dinner. When dinner was taken at an early hour, or when it is still the principal midday meal, luncheon was and is still a light repast. The derivation of the word has been obscured, chiefly owing to the attempted connexion with “nuncheon,” with which the word has nothing to do etymologically. “Luncheon” is an extended form of “lunch” (another form of “lump,” as “hunch” is of “hump”). Lunch and luncheon in the earliest meanings found are applied to a thick piece of bread, bacon, meat, &c.
The word “nuncheon,” or “nunchion,” with which “luncheon” has been frequently connected, appears as early as the 14th century in the form noneschenche. This meant a refreshment or distribution, properly of drink, but also accompanied with some small quantity of meat, taken in the early afternoon. The word means literally “noon-drink,” from none or noon, i.e. nona hora, the ninth hour, originally 3 o’clock P.M., but later “midday”—the church office of “nones,” and also the second meal of the day, having been shifted back—and schenchen, to pour out; cf. German schenken, which means to retail drink and to give, present. Schenche is the same as “shank,” the shin-bone, and the sense development appears to be shin-bone, pipe, hence tap for drawing liquor. See also Skeat, Etymological Dict. of English Language (1910), s.v. “nunchion.”
LUND, TROELS FREDERIK (1840- ), Danish historian, was born in Copenhagen on the 5th of September 1840. He entered the university of Copenhagen in 1858. About the age of thirty he took a post which brought before his notice the treasures of the archives of Denmark. His first important work, Historiske Skitser, did not appear until 1876, but after that time his activity was stupendous. In 1879 was published the first volume of his Danmarks og Norges Historie i Slutningen af det xvi. Aarhundrede, a history of daily life in Denmark and Norway at the close of the 16th century. Troels Lund was the pioneer of the remarkable generation of young historians who came forward in northern Europe about 1880, and he remained the most original and conspicuous of them. Saying very little about kings, armies and governments, he concentrates his attention on the life, death, employments, pleasures and prejudices of the ordinary men and women of the age with which he deals, using to illustrate his theme a vast body of documents previously neglected by the official historian. Lund was appointed historiographer-royal to the king of Denmark and comptroller of the Order of the Dannebrog. There was probably no living man to whom the destruction of the archives, when Christiansborg Castle was accidentally burned in 1884, was so acute a matter of distress. But his favourite and peculiar province, the MSS. of the 16th century, was happily not involved in that calamity.