Lawk or lawks, or occasionally lauk (the most common spelling from at least 1810 to 1850) is a interjection used to express surprise. It is dialectical corruption of either 'lack' or 'lord', being used in place of both. It was, and is, a stereotypical exclamation of the British lower classes, especially in the cockney dialect. It is rarely used in natural language today, but is a standard of period pieces.
Lawks comes in many common and not-so-common phrases, including lawk a mercy, O lawk,
lawk-a-day,
lawk-a-mussy,
lawk a daisy, and lawk a daisy me.
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