lurch [M16th] The lurch in leave someone in the lurch, ‘to leave an associate without support when they need it’, derives from French lourche, the name of a 16th-century game resembling backgammon. As well as a game, lurch then was a score or state of play in which one player was enormously ahead of the other. The unsteady, uncontrolled lurch is a different word from the late 17th century—it was originally a sailors’ term, which described the sudden leaning of a ship to one side, but like much jargon, we do not know where it came from.