lurch
lurch Lexical Profile
lurch Game Scores & Validity
• noun
An abrupt, unsteady, or uncontrolled movement or tilt to one side or forward.
"The train gave a sudden lurch as it switched tracks outside the station."
A helpless, unsupported, or difficult predicament, used almost exclusively in the phrase 'leave in the lurch'.
"When the main contractor abruptly resigned, the project team was left in the lurch."
• verb
To make an abrupt, unsteady, or uncontrolled movement forward or to one side.
"The exhausted hiker lurched forward and nearly tripped over the exposed tree root."
To progress erratically or shift abruptly from one crisis, state, or policy to another.
"Without a coherent budget, the struggling company lurched from one financial emergency to the next."
• Rhymes for lurch
Word Origin & Etymology
The sense of an unsteady movement arose as a 16th-century nautical term (originally 'lee-lurch') describing the sudden roll of a ship to leeward. The idiom 'leave in the lurch' derives from a separate 16th-century noun borrowed from Old French 'lourche', the name of an old board game similar to backgammon in which a player left far behind was said to be in a 'lurch'.