lobur

Cognate to Welsh llwfr (“cowardly”) and Middle Breton loffr (whence Breton lovr). Stifter believes that the word is a native word from Proto-Celtic *lubros, from Proto-Indo-European *lewp- (“to peel, strip”), cognate with Ancient Greek λυπρός (luprós, “distressing, wretched”).^[1] The word later came to be associated with Latin lepra (“leprosy”) and developed the sense “leper”, but the two words are etymologically unrelated.

• IPA^(key):

lobur (comparative lobru)

1. feeble
   • c. 800, Würzburg Glosses on the Pauline Epistles, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1987, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. I, pp. 499–712, Wb. 4^a27

     I⟨s⟩ samlid trá is lobur ar n-irnigde-ni, mat réte frecndirci gesme, et nín·fortéit-ni in spirut oc suidiu.

     Thus then our way of praying is feeble if present things are what we ask for, and the spirit does not help us with this.

• Middle Irish: lobar
  • Irish: lobhar
  • Scottish Gaelic: lobhar
  • ⇒ Manx: lourane

• Gregory Toner, Sharon Arbuthnot, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, Dagmar Wodtko, editors (2019), “lobur, lobor”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language