It belongs to a line of card games whose members include Nap, euchre, rams, hombre, and maw (spoil five).

Under various spellings, like the French forms Lenterne, Lenturlu, Looterlu (meaning "fiddlesticks", a meaningless word equivalent to "Lullay", or "Lulloo", used in Lullabies), the game is supposed to have reached England from France most probably with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.

Also called Langtrillo[1] in its prime form and later simply Loo (also termed Lant in the north of England by 1860,[2] most possibly for having evolved into a more elaborate form of play by the addition of new rules, it may also have been brought to England from Holland, where it was known as Lanterlu, Lanturlu or Lenterlui,[3][4] or North Germany, where it was known as Lenter or Bester Bube.

[4] In 1678 a Dutch periodical records a list of games including Verquere, Karnöffel, Poch, Krimpen, Lansquenet, Triomphe, Piquet, La Bête "and that miserable Lanterlu which is in fashion.

"[5] Whichever way it had been introduced to Britain, by the turn of the eighteenth century it was already England's most popular card game.

The rules of Lanterloo are listed by Charles Cotton in 1674 and subsequent editions of The Compleat Gamester, while a late 18th century description is given in Covent Garden Magazine.

[6] Loo was considered a great pastime by the idle rich of that time, but it acquired a very bad reputation as a potentially vicious "tavern" gambling game during the nineteenth century.

[7] The Oxford English Dictionary quotes a 1685 reference to "Pam at Lanterloo", and William Chatto quotes a Dutch political pamphlet of about 1648 entitled Het herstelde Verkeer-bert verbetert in een Lanterluy-spel,[8][9] containing a dialogue equating the game "Labate" (hence French Triomphe became La Bête, "The Beast", in Cotton's Complete Gamester, see also Labet) with "Lanterluy".

[10] The name "Pam", denoting the ♣Kn in its full capacity as permanent top trump in five-card loo, represents an old medieval comic-erotic character called Pamphilus (Latin for a Greek word, meaning "beloved of all"[11]) or "Pamphile", in French, described as "an old bawd" by the New Zealand-born English lexicographer Eric Partridge.

Cards rank as at Whist, except that the knave of clubs, which is called Pam, is the highest trump.

The players, having seen their hands, can either abandon them free of charge or elect to play, thereby undertaking to win at least one trick for one fifth of the pool.

The next best hand to the above is a trump-flush (five cards of a trump suit) and this sweeps the pool, if there be not a pam flush; and there is also a new deal.

An extra hand called Dumby, or Miss, is dealt in the centre of the table and the next turned up for trumps.