To be “left in the lurch” means you’ve been abandoned, lost, deserted, without assistance. It’s a pretty common phrase — in 2017, a couple of days before the Trump inauguration, NBC News ran a story with the headline “Democrats: Left in the Lurch.”
Where is this “lurch” you might be left in? Actually the lurch is not so much a “where” as a “what.” In the 1600s “lurch” was a board game, probably for two players. Nobody has found any records of exactly how the game was played, but supposedly it was similar to backgammon. It’s not played any more, and that may be because it was evidently pretty common for one player to win by a huge amount. It must have been common, because “lurch” came to mean just that; the situation where one player in a game (of any) ends up being ridiculously far ahead. If the game has points, then “lurch” also refers to one player winning when the other hasn’t scored at all. The sort of thing we now call being “skunked.”
“Lurch” began to be used beyond the world of games to mean getting the better of someone or having them at a disadvantage. The phrase “in the lurch” appears in that context, as in this 1601 quote: “Shee..Sels lyes for nothing, nothing for too much; Faith for three farthings, t’haue thee in the lurch.”
“Leaving” was added to “in the lurch” before long, and by the early 1700s meant exactly what it means today. In 1711, some country gentlemen might have been in for it: “If the Country Gentlemen get into it they will certainly be left in the Lurch.”
If you find yourself left in the lurch, one reaction might be to go lurching about to find your way home. “Lurch” also means leaning or staggering — like a ship at sea might lean to one side because of waves and wind. This one has a common phrase too: if you suddenly stagger, you “give a lurch.” It’s a little unclear where this version of “lurch” came from, but it probably isn’t related to the kind of lurch you can be left in. It began as a nautical term, and there are some older terms having to do with ships and sailing that are more likely to have given rise to this version of “lurch.”
Although those two “lurches” are still around, there used to be yet another kind of “lurch:” it meant lying in wait, or hiding in order to leap out and surprise, attack, or capture someone. Nobody has “lurched” in that sense since the 1800s — but we still “lurk,” which is just a variation of the same word. “Lurk” seems to be older, but both words were in use from about the 1300s until “lurch” lurched off into the lurch and was never seen again.
There’s still another way “lurch” was used in the past, and it’s a weird case. In the 1500s “to lurch” was to eat so much so fast that nobody else got a fair share. This might have come from the game-related “lurch,” but that’s just a guess; nobody is sure how “lurch” got any association with gobbling your food. That is to say, if you’re looking for a clear explanation, you’re going to be left in the lurch.
