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cob

Pronunciation: /kɑb/

The English word “cob” has 20 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A corncob.
  2. The seed-bearing head of a plant.
  3. A male swan.
  4. A gull, especially the black-backed gull (Larus marinus); also spelled cobb.
  5. A lump or piece of anything, usually of a somewhat large size, as of coal, stone, or excrement.
  6. A round, often crusty roll or loaf of bread.
  7. A building material consisting of clay, sand, straw, water, and earth, similar to adobe; also called cobb, rammed earth or pisé.
  8. A horse having a stout body and short legs.
  9. Any of the gold and silver coins that were minted in the Spanish Empire and valued in reales or escudos, such as the piece of eight—especially those which were crudely struck and irregularly shaped.
  10. One who is eminent, great, large, or rich.
  11. A spider (cf. cobweb).
  12. A small fish, the miller's thumb.
  13. A large fish, especially the kabeljou (variant spelling of kob).
  14. The head of a herring.
  15. A tower or small castle on top of a hill.
  16. A thresher.
  17. A cylinder with pins in it, encoding music to be played back mechanically by a barrel organ.
  18. A person of mixed black and white ancestry, especially a griffe; a mulatto.

verb

  1. To construct using mud blocks or to seal a wall using mud or an artificial equivalent.
  2. To have the heads mature into corncobs.

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…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.