Lucy

See also: lucy

English

Etymology

From Middle English Lucy, from Old French Lucie (notably after the Christian martyr Lucia of Syracuse), from Latin Lucia (feminine of Lucius, a Roman praenomen), from lux (“light”).

The name of the Australopithecus skeleton came from the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", which was being played repeatedly at the dig site camp at the time of the discovery. The slang term for LSD also derives from the song name, which many believe is essentially a reference to the drug.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈluːsi/

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -uːsi

Proper noun

Lucy

1. A female given name from Latin.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 9:

     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.

   • 1798, William Wordsworth, She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways:

     She lived unknown, and few would know / When Lucy ceased to be;/ But she is in her grave, and, oh,/ The difference to me!

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

     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!

   • 2009 Dora Raymond, Aunt Dora's Legacy, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 19 ( Lucy Who ):

     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?

2. A surname from Old French derived from place names in Normandy based on a male personal name, from Latin Lucius.
   • 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, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):
     : Act IV, Scene IV:

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

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

   The ancient human ancestor known as Lucy may have met her death more than 3m years ago when she tumbled out of a tree and crashed to the woodland floor, a team of US researchers claim.

4. (slang) The drug LSD.
   • 1967, Lennon–McCartney, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds:

     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

   • 1974, Dick Cavett, Chris Porterfield, Cavett:

     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 […]

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

     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.

Derived terms

• Miss Lucy

Related terms

• variants: Lucia, Luci, Lucile, Lucille
• male given names: Lucius, Lucian

Translations

female given name

• Aragonese: Lucía f
• Catalan: Llúcia f
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 露西 (zh) (Lùxī)

• Czech: Lucie (cs) f
• Danish: Lucia
• Dutch: Lucia (nl)
• Esperanto: Lucia (eo), Lucino
• Finnish: Lucia (fi)
• French: Lucie (fr) f
• Galician: Lucía (gl) f
• German: Lucia (de) f, Luzia (de) f
• Greek: Λουκία (el) f (Loukía)
• Hungarian: Lúcia (hu)
• Italian: Lucia (it) f
• Latvian: Lūcija
• Lithuanian: Liucija (lt) f
• Norwegian: Lucia
• Persian: لوسی (fa) (lusi)
• Polish: Łucja (pl) f
• Portuguese: Lúcia (pt) f
• Russian: Лю́сия f (Ljúsija), Лю́си (ru) f (Ljúsi), Люси́ (ru) f (Ljusí), Лю́ция (ru) f (Ljúcija)
• Scottish Gaelic: Liùsaidh f
• Serbo-Croatian: Lucija f
• Sicilian: Lucìa f
• Slovak: Lucia f
• Spanish: Lucía (es) f
• Swedish: Lucia (sv)
• Venetan: Łùzhia f

Cebuano

Etymology

Borrowed from English Lucy. Also a shortening of Lucia.

Proper noun

Lucy

1. a female given name from English
2. a diminutive of the female given names Lucia or Lucilla

Tagalog

Etymology

Borrowed from English Lucy.

Pronunciation

• (Standard Tagalog) IPA^(key): /ˈlusi/ [ˈluː.sɪ]
• Rhymes: -usi
• Syllabification: Lu‧cy

Proper noun

Lucy (Baybayin spelling ᜎᜓᜐᜒ)

1. a female given name from English