He was the head of the school when I, the elder, was a lout in the lower fourth.
She yelled; and the knights, laughing, took the lout, And thrust him from the gate.
I saw that the lout was astonished not to hear the lamentations he expected.
And he stood, something of a lout, with nervous hands upon his hips.
The lout was in clover; nothing could have suited him so well.
A strange matter to discuss with a lout, but he was so wonderful a listener!
He interrupted the objection of a high noble with, "Be silent, lout!"
But in Sarria's mind, the lout was an object of affection, sincere, unquestioning.
And I thought it was that crockery smashing goat of a lout of a cow-puncher.
He said of his country: That lout comes to a knowledge of his wants too late.
1540s, "awkward fellow, clown, bumpkin," perhaps from a dialectal survival of Middle English louten (v.) "bow down" (c.1300), from Old English lutan "bow low," from Proto-Germanic *lut- "to bow, bend, stoop" (cf. Old Norse lutr "stooping," which might also be the source of the modern English word), from PIE *leud- "to lurk" (cf. Gothic luton "to deceive," Old English lot "deceit), also "to be small" (see little). Non-Germanic cognates probably include Lithuanian liudeti "to mourn;" Old Church Slavonic luditi "to deceive," ludu "foolish." Sense of "cad" is first attested 1857 in British schoolboy slang.
