lucy

plural lucies

1. archaicThe northern pike (a kind of fish).

   That a lucy or luce is the mature pike, every piscatorial schoolboy knows.

   1895, The Gentleman's Magazine, January to June issue, pg. 38

1. A female given name from Latin.

   She liv'd unknown, and few could know / When Lucy ceas'd to be; / But she is in her Grave, and, Oh ! / The difference to me.

   1800, W[illiam] Wordsworth, “She dwelt among the untrodden ways”, in Lyrical Ballads, with Other Poems. […], 2nd edition, London: […] T[homas] N[orton] Longman and O[wen] Rees, […], by Biggs and Co., […], published 1800, →OCLC, page 52

   3 more examples

   Then did my younger brother Amidas / Love that same other Damzell, Lucy bright, / To whom but little dowre allotted was; / Her vertue was the dowre, that did delight.

   1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 9

   But certainly there are some names which seem to belong to particular classes of character, to form the mind and even influence the destiny: Louisa, now; - is not your Louisa necessarily a die-away damsel, who reads novels, and holds her head on one side, languishing and given to love! Is not Lucy a pretty soubrette, a wearer of cast gowns and cast smiles, smart and coquettish!

   1830, Mary Russell Mitford, Our Village: Fourth Series: Cottage Names

   Now we'll just use a fiction name / Lucy that sounds nice / A name we can remember / Without repeating twice / / My name is so old fashioned / And they are very few / But some will have a puzzled look / And whisper Lucy who?

   2009, Dora Raymond, Aunt Dora's Legacy, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 19

2. A surname from Old French derived from place names in Normandy based on a male personal name, from Latin Lucius.

   Here is Sir William Lucy, who with me / Set from our o'ermatch'd forces forth for aid.

   1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iv]

3. archaeologyThe fossilized partial skeleton of a female Australopithecus afarensis discovered in Ethiopia, an early hominin; also, the individual whose skeleton this was.

   1 more example

   A new analysis of Lucy’s bones suggests that she may have fallen to her death from a tall tree. […] In 1974, scientists working in Ethiopia uncovered an extraordinary female skeleton, whom they called Lucy. She was 3.2 million years old, and belonged to a new species of hominid now known as Australopithecus afarensis.

   2016 August 29, Ed Yong, “What Killed the World’s Most Famous Fossil?”, in The Atlantic

4. A place name:
   1. A village in Montmort-Lucy commune, Marne department, Grand Est, France.
   2. A commune in Moselle department, Grand Est, France.
   3. A commune in Seine-Maritime department, Normandy, France.
   4. An unincorporated community in Houston County, Alabama, United States.

1. slanguncountableThe drug LSD.

   The last time I made moocah, or dug sweet Lucy, was with Janis Joplin, who gave me one that must have been rolled by Montezuma himself. I saw my thoughts in clear letters, and they both felt and looked like a double strike on a coin […].

   1974, Dick Cavett, Chris Porterfield, Cavett, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, →ISBN, page 234

   2 more examples

   Picture yourself in a boat on a river/With tangerine trees and marmalade skies/Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly/A girl with kaleidoscope eyes/Cellophane flowers of yellow and green/Towering over your head/Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes/And she's gone/Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

   1967, Lennon–McCartney, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”

   Tanya shook her head slowly. 'We married to fill out the missing bits of ourselves. That doesn't have to be a bad reason. But you see, I'd been "in it". The contrast between that infernal blaze of feeling and keep-the-home-fires burning was just too much. It's why one mustn't start taking Lucy. Lucy was the current slang for LSD.

   1984, Lynne Reid Banks, The Warning Bell, page 302

   Synonyms: acid, headlight, liquid sunshine, LSD, LSD-25, lysergic acid diethylamide