Literary notes about LOUT (AI summary)
In literature, the word "lout" is employed to depict characters who are unrefined, clumsy, or socially awkward, often serving as a marker for lower social status or crude behavior. Writers use it to evoke a vivid image of a person lacking in grace or intellect, as when a driver greedily devours ginger cake [1] or when a provincial character is portrayed as both pursuing his destiny and embodying an unsophisticated nature [2]. The term frequently carries a satirical or humorous tone, underscoring the contrast between the crude behavior of the lout and the refined qualities of other characters, as seen in the portrayal of boorish rural simplicity alongside urbane wit [3, 4]. Throughout various narratives, from Shakespeare to Chekhov, "lout" is versatile—at times an insult that highlights stupidity and physical clumsiness [5, 6], and at other moments a vehicle for social commentary on class and cultural pretensions [7, 8].
- The driver, as lank a lout as ever slept in a stable, sat upon a board seat, stuffing his greedy mouth with ginger cake.
— from The Starbucks by Opie Percival Read - That low-born provincial lout pursued him like a Nemesis, was become indeed the evil genius of his life.
— from Scaramouche: A Romance of the French Revolution by Rafael Sabatini - Hang nothing but a calf's-skin, most sweet lout.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare - This vast, lumbering, ignorant, dull-witted lout was stage-struck, and irrecoverably.
— from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain - “I want to be A1 at cricket and football, and all the other games, and to make my hands keep my head against any fellow, lout or gentleman.
— from Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes - And I thought: What a stupid, lazy lout!
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of Short Stories by Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov - Look if you haven’t upset the wine on your new trousers, lout!
— from The House by the Medlar-Tree by Giovanni Verga - Also he was piqued that he had been what he called such a stupid lout as to ask that intervention from Mr. Farebrother.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot