1590s, enterloper, "unauthorized trader trespassing on privileges of chartered companies," probably a hybrid from inter- "between" + -loper (from landloper "vagabond, adventurer," also, according to Johnson, "a term of reproach used by seamen of those who pass their lives on shore"); perhaps a dialectal form of leap, or from Middle Dutch loper "runner, rover," from lopen "to run," from Proto-Germanic *hlaupan "to leap" (see leap, v.). General sense of "self-interested intruder" is from 1630s.