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bob (third-person singular simple presentbobs, present participlebobbing, simple past and past participlebobbed)
(intransitive) To move gently and vertically, in either a single motion or repeatedly up and down, at or near the surface of a body of water, or similar medium.
The cork bobbed gently in the calm water.
The ball, which we had thought lost, suddenly bobbed up out of the water.
The flowers were bobbing in the wind.
(transitive) To move (something) as though it were bobbing in water.
And if any man hapned, by longe sittynge, to slepe, or, by any other countenance, to shewe him selfe to be weary, he was sodaynly bobbed on the face by the seruantes of Nero, […]
Lo, lo, lo, lo, what modicums of wit he vtters, his euaſions haue eares thus long, I haue bobd his braine more then he has beate my bones.
(intransitive)Synonym of blob(“catch eels using worms strung on thread”)
1876, George Christopher Davies, The Swan and Her Crew, page 134:
After they had had supper Frank said, Do you remember those men whom we saw near Norwich, who sat in small boats all the night long, and with a line in each hand, bobbed for eels?
Ay, Ay, and Then to Bed, ſays the Bride. This Girl did but ſpeak the Widows Mind; for let Fleſh and Blood pretend what it will, to Bed, to Bed, will be the Bob of the Song.
One of the bottlenosed fraternity it was went by the name of James Wought alias Saphiro alias Spark and Spiro, put an ad in the papers saying he'd give a passage to Canada for twenty bob.
“’Ere y’are, the best rig-out you ever ’ad. A tosheroon [half a crown] for the coat, two ’ogs for the trousers, one and a tanner for the boots, and a ’og for the cap and scarf. That’s seven bob.”
[…] there was a sound of barking and a great hefty dog of the Hound of the Baskervilles type came galloping at me, obviously intent on mayhem,[…]. And I was just commending my soul to God and thinking that this was where my new flannel trousers got about thirty bobs' worth of value bitten out of them, […]
I could have saved myself a few bob buying it somewhere else.
1949 March 23, “Capital Planning For Cherry Blossom Festival On April 3”, in Warren Times-Mirror, volume forty-nine, Warren, Pa., page twelve, column 1:
A great many visitors are expected. They will take pictures of each other under the cherry blossoms and—the Chamber of Commerce hopes—spend a few bobs for hot logs, gasoline, eastern finery and souvenirs of the nation’s capital.
It was a Molotov cocktail to dispose of my mortal remains. / “Cor, what a beauty.” / “Hello, somebody’s thrown a match into a box of fireworks; easy to do.” / “A few bobs’ worth of whizzers gone up there, Mabel.”
Usage notes
The use of bob for shilling is dated slang in the UK and Australia, since decimalisation. In East African countries where the currency is the shilling, it is current usage, and not considered slang. OED gives first usage as 1789.
The use of bob to describe a 10-cent coin is derived from the fact that it was of equal worth to a shilling during decimalisation, however since then, the term has slowly dropped out of usage and is seldom used today.
1986, Eugene P Mortimore, Amiga programmer's handbook, Volumes 1-2:
The bob list determines the drawing priority […]
1995, John Girvin, “Blitting bobs”, in comp.sys.amiga.programmer (Usenet):
IMHO, youd be better doing other things with the CPU and letting the blitter draw bobs, esp on a machine with fast ram.
2002, demoeffects, “Demotized 0.0.1 - A collection of demo effects from the early days of the demo scene.”, in fm.announce (Usenet):
Changes: This release adds 2 new effects (bobs and unlimited bobs), has a GFX directory for sharing graphics, adds utility functions to the common code
bob in Nóra Ittzés, editor, A magyar nyelv nagyszótára [A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Hungarian Language] (Nszt.), Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2006–2031 (work in progress; published a–ez as of 2024).