a1400 in 6th Rep. Royal Comm. Hist. MSS: Pt. I (1877) App. 319 in Parl. Papers (C. 1745) XLVII. 1 Par fay þanne wille we habbe hym þat sitteþ ȝend west Ȝe y blessed be þy labbe, he wol be a god nest.

c1405 (c1390) G. Chaucer Miller's Tale (Hengwrt) (2003) l. 323 I nam no labbe And thogh I seye I nam nat lief to gabbe.

a1413 (c1385) G. Chaucer Troilus & Criseyde (Pierpont Morgan) (1882) iii. l. 300 Prouerbes kanst þy selue y-nowe..A-yens þat vice for to ben a labbe Al seyde men soth as often as þe[y] gabbe.

c1422 T. Hoccleve Tale of Jerelaus (Durh.) l. 542 in Minor Poems (1970) i. 159 I neuere was yit of my tonge a labbe.

a1500 in Retrosp. Rev. (1854) 2 309 Labbe hyt whyste, and owt yt muste.

1746 Exmoor Scolding (ed. 3) i. 3 Ees ded'nt thenk tha had'st a be' zitch a Labb o' tha Tongue.

1847 J. O. Halliwell Dict. Archaic & Provinc. Words II Lab, a tittle-tattle; a blab. Also called a lab-o-the-tongue. West.

1888 F. T. Elworthy W. Somerset Word-bk. (at cited word) I 'sure you he's a rigler, proper lab.

1982 B. G. Charles Eng. Dial. S. Pembrokeshire 31 Lab, ‘gossip, a tittle-tattler’.

1868 Circular (Oneida Community, N.Y.) 17 Aug. 175/1 In rearranging the line shafting the foreman of the machine-shop intimated that possibly it might be found necessary to run the shaft through into the first room of the ‘Lab’, so as to connect with the printing-press above.

1884 Chronicle (Univ. Michigan) 6 Dec. 97/1 In the last number of The Chronicle we failed to note the return to the ‘Lab.’ of Mr. Ed. Campbell, Prof. Johnson's assistant.

1898 E. Rutherford Let. 25 Sept. in Life & Lett. Ld. Rutherford (1939) iii. 63 I have met Mr Macdonald several times, he is the millionaire who has given all the money for the Science labs.

1912 Chums 5 Oct. 69/3 They walked along the corridor towards the chemistry lab.

1962 L. Deighton Ipcress File xviii. 108 Practically all the little countries have got their labs working on this.

1990 Pract. Eng. Teaching Dec. 49/3 I often work in a language lab where students..record conversations, interviews or opinions on their individual cassettes.

2011 S. Mukherjee Emperor of all Maladies 280 By the early 1970s..his lab had purified particles of a new virus, which he called hepatitis B virus, or HBV.

2016 Daily Tel. (Nexis) 5 Feb. People still think that taking maths and physics means you become a teacher, or work in a lab, rather than creating animations or building apps, or going into data science.

1986 S. A. Hoffmann Under Ether Dome iv. 85 Don't order any labs that you have to draw yourself.

1995 Sci., Technol., & Human Values 20 492 His labs were real bad.

2007 M. S. Clement Blueprints Q & As for Step 2 3/1 His blood pressure on admit was 90/50 with a pulse of 140, and his labs were significant for a creatinine.

2012 J. Kellerman Victims ix. 63 You got a call from the coroners, labs are back on Berlin.

1871 Rep. Geol. Explor. 1870–1 (Geol. Surv. N.Z.) 74 (table) No. on Lab. Book.

1905 Central June 62 A man..finds that the only transmutation has been brought about by his lab.-boy who has mixed his specimens whilst dusting.

1936 Fortune Oct. 176/2 Neither he nor his assistant..wants a flossy laboratory; it is actually cheaper and more effective to set up provisional lab equipment when it is needed.

1937 W. H. Auden & L. MacNeice Lett. from Iceland v. 57 A Prince must be anonymous, observant, A kind of lab-boy, or a civil servant.

1947 Life 17 Nov. 157/2 (caption) Sterilizing vaults are used to decontaminate instruments and containers after they have been used in the lab experiments.

1951 ‘J. Wyndham’ Day of Triffids ii. 50 He..lacked the qualifications for lab work.

1961 A. Wilson Old Men at Zoo ii. 87 I must also give preliminary seeding out interviews for Beard's four new lab assistants.

1962 ‘E. McBain’ Like Love (1964) xvi. 214 We just got a lab report... I'm talking about your fingerprints on the glass.

1972 Listener 6 Apr. 467/1 An honest lab assistant loses his job for refusing to work on a poison gas project.

1999 G. Bear Darwin's Radio vi. 41 Kaye walked between the lab benches, peering through the glass doors of incubators at stacks of petri dishes within.

2010 New Scientist 20 Nov. 20/1 Lab experiments on the bullethead parrotfish suggest the cocoons ward off the bites of bloodsucking parasites called gnathiids that spread diseases.

1916 Chem. Abstr. 10 2481 Administration per os of fungi to lab. animals.

1949 Cumberland (Maryland) News 28 Feb. 10/5 Hamsters are good lab. animals.

1980 T. Wolfe Right Stuff (1981) iii. 63 To end up like that: a lab rabbit..a wire up the kazoo.

1987 Age 26 Aug. 7/3 (heading) Lab cats freed.

1994 Jrnl. Kansas Entomol. Soc. 67 107 Adults from the field strain flew more frequently than those from the lab strain.

2005 T. Grandin & C. Johnson Animals in Transl. v. 209 What Dr. Mineka showed is that it's super-easy to teach a lab monkey to be just as terrified of snakes as any monkey living out in the wild.

2007 Harper's Mag. Dec. 68/3 My own rescued lab mice are..of the strain best known as black 6, short for its full genetic nomenclature, C57BL/6J.

1887 Boyd's Directory District of Columbia 544/2 Leyhan John, lab. School.

1915 Bull. U.S. Bureau Educ. No. 3 22 Standards for lab school.

2005 N.Y. Times (National ed.) 31 July iv. a 20/2 Equally important is the kind of education—Lab School or skill and drill—that's delivered to 3- and 4-year-olds.

1919 Calif. Alumni Fortn. 7 June 218/1 Browder, Aline, Lab. Tech.

1973 Amer. Speech 48 195 Equally valuable are the lab techs who..test urine, stool and blood specimens and report their findings to the doctor and the nurse.

2005 A. Burdick Out of Eden (2006) xix. 257 On occasion, as part of a separate research project..the lab techs make house calls.

1921 Surg., Gynecol. & Obstetr. 32 474 Head Lab. Technician.

1970 E. Kübler-Ross On Death & Dying (1973) i. 7 He will be surrounded by busy nurses, orderlies, interns, residents, a lab technician perhaps who will take some blood.

2008 Harvard Mag. Jan. 31/1 Tiny microarrays or ‘gene chips’ now enable lab technicians to examine the activity of 30,000 genes at once.

1893 Therapeutic Gaz. 15 Feb. 92/1 Lactic acid and erythrodextrin decided; acid phosphates present; lab test positive.

1947 Sci. News-Lett. 8 Nov. 291 It is effective against the typhus and spotted fever group as well as parrot fever in lab tests.

2015 Wall St. Jrnl. 29 June r6/2 Increasing numbers of patients have access to a patient portal—a site that allows them to schedule appointments.., refill medications and check results of lab tests.

1892 Daily News 4 July 4/1 L means Liberal; D.L. Dissentient Liberal; C, Conservative; Lab., Labour.

1920 Evening Post (Wellington, N.Z.) 1 Jan. 6/2 Manawatu. E. Newman (R.) 3021. A. C. Hillier (Lab.) 2158.

1952 Brisbane Tel. 20 Mar. 9 (headline) Lab. rallying the workers.

1988 Daily Tel. 2 Feb. 11/1 Mr Tony Benn (Lab, Chesterfield) also failed to get an emergency debate.

2017 @AllyS_1988 8 June in twitter.com (O.E.D. Archive) Can't bring myself to support Scot Lab or a good chunk of the UK Lab politicians.

1925 Field Illustr. Nov. 19 (caption) A litter of Labs at Caumsett.

1954 W. H. Ivens in F. Griscom Labrador Retriever 44 The shining beauty of the coat is one of the vanities of the Lab owner.

1986 R. Rendell Live Flesh x. 141 She wasn't a puppy when I had her... They don't usually live past eleven, those labs.

2006 N.Y. Times (National ed.) 13 Feb. a23/3 He..looked to be a cross between a yellow Lab and who knew what.

c1400 (?a1387) W. Langland Piers Plowman (Huntington HM 137) (1873) C. xiii. l. 39 Noþer for loue labbe hit out, ne lacke hit for non enuye.

1440 J. Capgrave Life St. Norbert (1977) l. 3161 For alle here clennesse bityn thei were, With ful bittir tungis..labbyng and roryng as doth ony bere.

a1500 in R. H. Robbins Secular Lyrics 14th & 15th Cent. (1952) 180 I moste nede loue þat louyth agayn..To turn my herte þou labste [emended in ed. to gabste] in vane, Quia amore languio.

1888 F. T. Elworthy W. Somerset Word-bk. (at cited word) Be sure you don't zay nort about it to he, else he'll sure to lab it out to zomebody or 'nother.

1982 B. G. Charles Eng. Dial. S. Pembrokeshire 31 Lab, ‘to gossip, to blab, to let out secrets’.

1402 T. Hoccleve Lepistre Cupide (Huntington) l. 116 in Minor Poems (1970) ii. 297 Repreef of here he spekth, and villenye, As mannes labbyng [c1475 Bodl. 638 babbyng] tonge is wont alway.

c1405 (c1395) G. Chaucer Merchant/Franklin Link (Hengwrt) (2003) l. 10 Of hir tonge a labbyng shrewe is she.

a1500 Partenay (Trin. Cambr.) l. 3751 By your labbyng tonges iongling.