cob
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /kɑb/
enpr: kŏb
ipa: /kɒb/
rhymes: -ɒb
Forms: form: cobs
form: cobbing
form: cobbed
form: cobbed
Etymology: Of uncertain origin. The word has many disparate senses, which are likely of diverse origin. The specifics of these origins have long been debated, as has the question of which senses arise from which origins. At least the swan sense originated in Middle English cobbe (“male swan; gang leader; bully”). Some other senses likely originated as a variant of cop (“head, top, peak, summit”). In other senses, the word may be related to cub, itself of obscure origin but possibly from Old Norse kobbi (“seal”). However, many alternative etymologies have been proposed to account for some or all senses of cob; various sources have related it, for example, to English cot (“cottage”), Welsh cob (“top, tuft”), or German Kübel (“large container”). All these etymologies are disputed, and the exact origins of cob cannot be known with any certainty.
Senses: examples: text: Windows and other details can be cobbed into place, and niches and reliefs are easy to create.
ref: 2004, Joe Kennedy, Building Without Borders: Sustainable Construction for the Global Village, →ISBN, page 178:
text: The technique appeals to alternative builders because of its ability to be sculpted, its use of waste materials, and its pest resistant properties. Each course is tamped down, or "cobbed," to impart strength and to aid in curing.
ref: 2009, Marian Keeler, Bill Burke, Fundamentals of Integrated Design for Sustainable Building, →ISBN, page 304:
text: And there is another alternative: both papercrete and fidobe can be cobbed.
ref: 2011, Gordon Salberg, “Paper houses: papercrete and fidobe”, in The Art of Natural Building, →ISBN, page 174:
glosses: To construct using mud blocks or to seal a wall using mud or an artificial equivalent.
examples: text: Ninety Day came to maturity very early and cobbed plentifully, but the grain proved shallow and lacking in meal.
ref: 1907, Agricultural Gazette of New South Wales - Volume 17, page 731:
text: Corn was a bumper crop and cobbed much above average so that silage will be above average in feeding value.
ref: 1951, Monthly Crop & Live Stock Report - Volumes 368-416, page 14:
text: We were presently in the maize country. It looked beautiful. Miles of waving, dark green, tasselled corn just cobbing.
ref: 2019, C. W. Bryde, From Chart House to Bush Hut, page 64:
glosses: To have the heads mature into corncobs.
raw_tags: of growing corn
examples: text: Darning socks, knitting, fancy work, cooking, housework, cobbing corn.
ref: 1969, Jim Henderson, Open Country Calling: People and Places Out of Town, page 82:
text: Here are some of the pople who made this yearbook easy to live with: […] David Littlejohn and Martin Munroe for their concessions, All the people who cobbed corn, Sara Perry for her steadfastness and warm smile in the coffee shop, […]
ref: 1976, Lisgar Collegiate Institute, Vox Lycei 1975-1976, page 21:
text: Besides, the joy of shelling fresh peas or cobbing the corn in the right season is a great feeling!
ref: 2017, Acharya Shunya, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom:
glosses: To remove the kernels from a corncob.
examples: text: The price paid for cobbing (separating the seed from the straw) and drawing the seed of red and white clover is from 3s. 6d. to 4s. 6d. the bushel of 5 stone of seed.
ref: 1847, British Farmer's Magazine - Issue 10, page 510:
text: In the new machine under notice, clover can be "cobbed" and "hulled" or "drawn," and the seed delivered in one operation, the whole being done at the stack side in the open air and in one-thired of the time previously occupied.
ref: 1897, The British Trade Journal - Volume 35, page 235:
glosses: To thresh.
examples: text: I have in this manner cobbed, with great success, lands that had formerly been in tillage, which would no longer bring corn because they were exhausted, either by consecutive crops or by the great quantity of weeks, which impoverished them: these became as good as my regularly cobbed lands.
ref: 1762, Louis François Henri de Menon (Marquis de Turbilly.), A discourse on the cultivation of waste and barren lands, page 90:
glosses: To break up ground with a hoe.