bib1
/bɪb
/noun
1A piece of cloth or plastic fastened round a child’s neck to keep its clothes clean while eating.He removed the grey bib from around my neck and handed me a piece of white tissue....
- On a less emotional level, they found that cloth bibs were often scattered all over the house - and usually ended up in places where they weren't needed, such as an upstairs bedroom.
- Through the production company, I've written three books, and I have a small line of T-shirts, umbrellas, kids clothes, and bibs.
1.1A loose-fitting sleeveless garment worn on the upper body for identification, especially by competitors and officials at sporting events: the sponsor’s name printed on our bibs...
- The classes involve jogging, sprinting, star-jumps, stomach crunches and push-ups with participants wearing a numbered bib, allowing easy identification should you need to be shouted at.
- One night last December in Beaver Creek, he was hanging out in the village plaza awaiting the announcement of the starting draw and handing out of race bibs for the next day's downhill race.
- The teams - in orange, blue or green bibs - are each a deliberate mixture of first-team regulars, substitutes and fringe players.
1.2The part above the waist of the front of an apron or pair of dungarees.But some of the silk eveningwear was fit for the most glamorous of parties, apron bibs floating across the chest then twisting into straps over the shoulders and asymmetrically across the back before dripping into a train....
- The company has continued to add full and bib apron styles and colors, and it has expanded its line, and introduced a new poplin smock.
- Unique to the garden store is a rugged nylon bib with five mesh pockets suitable for holding and organizing hand tools and seed packets.
1.3A patch of colour on the throat of a bird or other animal: a black bird with a white bib...
- The female is paler and lacks the grey crown, white cheeks, black bib and eye stripe and chestnut brown nape, but has a straw coloured stripe behind the eye.
- The wattle (a flap of loose skin extending like a bib from the bird's neck) will turn blue at the base, graduating into a deep rose pink that hangs down like a pendant.
- The black bib did extend outwards towards the throat and wasn't as neat as on a Marsh Tit.
2A common European inshore fish of the cod family. Also called pout2 or pouting.
- Trisopterus luscus, family Gadidae.
- Big female cuckoo wrasse, pollack, several bib and a John Dory were all I could see, although my view was slightly obscured by several fronds of kelp.
- Divers have reported balleen wrasse, pollard, cod, bib and even basking sharks swimming around the frigate's passageways.
Phrases
one's best bib and tucker
stick (or poke) one's bib in
Origin
Late 16th century: probably from bib2.
A bib for a baby is recorded from the late 16th century. It probably came from the old word bib from Latin bibere, meaning ‘to drink’. Towards the end of the 17th century adults too were wearing bibs, often as part of an apron. Women could decorate this with a tucker, a piece of lace worn round the top of the bodice—‘The countrywoman…minds nothing on Sundays so much as her best bib and tucker’ (1747). Soon men, too, were described as wearing their best bib and tucker, their smartest clothes. See also beer
Rhymes
bib2
/bɪb/verb (bibs, bibbing, bibbed) [with object] archaic
Drink (something alcoholic): (as noun bibbing) after a considerable amount of wine-bibbing, I settled down...
- Though the issue of drink was not raised in these cases, it is likely that a visit to market would have included ale-bibbing.
- On the other side of the church was a large and excellent bowling-green, which was much frequented by the idle fellows of the village, who preferred ale-bibbing in the sun before confinement on the loom or at the lap-stone.
- He appreciated the elevation of set habits - wine-bibbing, walks, a little antique collecting - into a kind of well-regulated art.
Origin
Late Middle English: probably from Latin bibere 'to drink'.