sobby
English edit
Etymology edit
Adjective edit
sobby (comparative sobbier, superlative sobbiest)
- Very sad; inclined to sob (weep with convulsive gasps).
- 1903, George Horace Lorimer, Old Gorgon Graham[1]:
- It began, 'Where is my wandering boy to-night?' and by the time she was through I was feeling so mushy and sobby that I put a five instead of a one into the plate by mistake.
- 1917, Sewell Ford, Wilt Thou Torchy[2]:
- Every piece of furniture, from the threadbare sofa to the rickety center table, seems kind of sad and sobby.
- (Can we verify(+) this sense?) That has been sobbed (soaked); dripping wet.
- 1882, Carlton McCarthy, Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865[3]:
- Nobody knows who he was; but no matter how wet the leaves, how sobby the twigs, no matter if there was no fire in a mile of the camp, that fellow could start one.
- 1887, Thomas Nelson Page, “No Haid Pawn”, in In Ole Virginia; Or, Marse Chan and Other Stories, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner's Sons, pages 180–181:
- The original building of the house, and its blood-stained foundation stones; the dead who had died of the pestilence that had raged afterward; the bodies carted by scores and buried in the sobby earth of the graveyard, whose trees loomed up through the broken window; […]
- 1902, Ellen Glasgow, The Battle Ground[4]:
- The woman served him sullenly, placing some sobby biscuits and a piece of cold bacon on his plate, and pouring out a glass of buttermilk with a vicious thrust of the pitcher.
References edit
- “sobby, adj.”, in OED Online
, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.
