slubber
English edit
Etymology edit
Compare Danish slubbre (“to swallow, to sup up”), and English slabber.
Pronunciation edit
Verb edit
slubber (third-person singular simple present slubbers, present participle slubbering, simple past and past participle slubbered)
- To do hastily, imperfectly, or sloppily.
- c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene viii], page 171:
- […] he [Antonio] answered, do not so,
Slubber not business for my sake, Bassanio,
But stay the very riping of the time
- To daub; to stain; to cover carelessly.
- 1641 May, John Milton, Of Reformation Touching Church-Discipline in England: And the Cavvses that hitherto have Hindred it; republished as Will Taliaferro Hale, editor, Of Reformation Touching Church-Discipline in England (Yale Studies in English; LIV), New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1916, →OCLC:
- There is no art that hath more […] slubbered with aphorisming pedantry than the art of policy.
- To slobber.
- 1914, Jack London, chapter 33, in Mutiny of the Elsinore:
- It grows colder, and grayer, and penguins cry in the night, and huge amphibians moan and slubber.
Noun edit
slubber (plural slubbers)
References edit
- Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (1989)
- Random House Webster's Unabridged Electronic Dictionary (1987-1996)