INTERLOPER, one who interferes in affairs in which he has no concern. This word, with the verbal form "to interlope," first appears at the end of the i6th and beginning of the 17th century in connection with the interference of unauthorized persons in the trade monopoly of the Russia Company and later of the East India Company. The New English Dictionary quotes from H. Lane (159o), Haklyt's Voyages, "From those parts the Musco vites were furnished out of Dutchland by enterlopers with all arts and artificers and had few or none by us," and also from the Minutes of the Court of the East India Company, 22nd of Feb ruary 1615, "to examine all suspected personnes that intend inter lopinge into the East Indies or Muscovy." Edward Philips (New World of Words, 1658) defines interlopers at common law as those "that without legal authority intercept the trade of a com pany, as it were Interleapers." The word appears to be of English origin, for the Dutch enterlooper, smuggler, often given as the source, was taken from English, as was the French interlope. The word is a compound of inter, between, and lope, a dialectal variant of "leap." A common word for a vagrant, or "straggler," as it is defined, was till I580 "landloper," and the combination of "strag gler" and "interloper" is found in Horsey's Travels (Hakluyt Soc.), 1603-1627, "all interlopers and straglyng Englishmene lyving in that country."