bob1
/bɒb
/- As we approached the jetty a speedboat whisked past sending our boat bobbing violently in its wake.
- Your hired motor boat is bobbing up and down at anchor, occasionally nudging the pebbles on the beach as a bigger wave breaks.
- She shook her head, her short blond locks bobbing around her head.
Synonyms
- You can't help but bob your shoulders and sway your hips to the raunchy jazz in this number!
- He keeps filming the milky-eyed and toothless bluehair as she bobs her head around, struggling to focus on who she's talking to.
- The bird bobs its head, showing more interest in its surroundings than the man who sustains an unaffected stare.
- Birds bobbed up and down, up and down, disappearing and disappearing again.
- A brown head bobbed up from beneath a pile of displaced couch cushions, then a body, and a hand holding a sketching pad.
- St Johnstone, who had bobbed up a bit from the bottom, had not pulled away in their last couple of fixtures either, having lost to Celtic and more controversially Hearts in midweek.
- She swept out of the room, and the maid, after bobbing in a curtsy, followed.
Synonyms
- With a quick bob of her tongue she span back around and marched down the corridor, opening the classroom door by magic without even realising she had done it.
- Unlike Garrett's bewildered reaction, Clara only gave a slight bob of her head to acknowledge him.
- Her mistress gave a slight bob of her head, and she began bustling about, stirring up the fire.
Synonyms
- ‘Excuse me, my lady, but my lady Kei said for me to bring Nichole here to you for a bit,’ said Lela with a slight bob to signify a curtsey.
Synonyms
Phrases
bob and weave
bob for apples
Origin
Late Middle English: of unknown origin.
Short words are often the hardest to pin down, and this is the case with bob, which has many uses. Some imply ‘short’; for example, the hairstyle, which became fashionable in the 1920s. Before that people had used bob for a horse's docked tail, a short bunch of hair or curls, and a short wig, and the bob in bobcat (late 19th century), bobsleigh (mid 19th century), and bobtail (mid 16th century) also means ‘short’.
Another set of uses involves a quick, short movement. People and things bob up and down, and boxers bob and weave. The British bob, ‘a shilling’, dating from the late 18th century, does not appear to be related to any of these, and its origin remains a mystery.
Bob's your uncle, used to draw attention to the ease with which something can be done, is from the pet form of the name Robert. The Robert in question may have been Lord Salisbury, who in 1887 gave the important post of Chief Secretary for Ireland to his nephew, Arthur Balfour, who was only 39 at the time. The problem with this suggestion is that the earliest recorded examples do not appear until the 1930s, around 50 years after the incident in question. However, we do know that the British bobby comes from Sir Robert Peel, British Home Secretary from 1828–30, who established the Metropolitan Police. The old-fashioned term peelers for policemen also comes from his name.
Rhymes
bob2
/bɒb/- She had auburn hair styled in a bob cut, gentle, hazel eyes, and the greatest smile that had ever graced any thin, yet soft face.
- Linda Evangelista had the shortest hair with a bob to the bottom of her neck.
- I've had my hair cut from just above my waist to a short bob and it looks really thick and bushy.
- Newton showed that after appropriate corrections are made for air resistance, action and reaction are equal regardless of whether the pendulum bobs are composed of steel, glass, cork, or wool.
- The relationship between the masses of the replica pendulum bobs and the mass of the overall platform was roughly the same, and the clocks' periods were also comparable.
- In the bob skeleton event, competitors travel on a sled on their stomach, head first down a track.
- Emily, when I last saw her, was very short and had brown hair that was bobbed at her chin.
- She pulled the straw out and twisted her helmet off, revealing a teenage girl with round glasses, bobbed brown hair and bright smiling eyes.
- Marya shook her head, her neatly bobbed dark hair brushing against high cheekbones.
Origin
Late Middle English (denoting a bunch or cluster): of unknown origin.
bob3
/bɒb/- I was given two bob to have one shilling each way on Dawros.
- Robinson should invest in a few bob on the Euro lottery.
- It may be worth a few bob in years to come, but that was not the reason I bought it.
- After this season, they might be worth a bob or two as a memorial souvenir.
- You'll find a lot of beer cans, unless you can tune out aluminium, but you'll pick up an interesting selection of lost property and a few bob in coins.
Phrases
silly (or mad or crazy) as a two-bob watch
Origin
Late 18th century: of unknown origin.
bob4
/bɒb/- I must try and understand ‘hunting’ and get a proper plain bob going.
- In this session we will be looking at the calling positions in Plain Bob Doubles and other doubles methods and we will deal with the fundamental effect of bobs on the coursing order which underpins the whole of what comes later.
Origin
Late 17th century: perhaps connected with bob1 in the sense 'sudden movement up and down'.
Bob5
/bɒb/- To build a block of flats, you simply slot the modules together in whatever arrangement you or your architect like, slap some cladding on the outside (red cedar, please, not concrete, this is the 21st century) - and Bob's your uncle.
- You take any random word, preferably BAYBEE, chant it a few hundred times whilst repeatedly thumping any handy hard surface, record it with some techno tweaking, and Bob's your uncle.
- It should not come as a surprise - after all, it's a simple case of keying in a few addresses, pressing the ‘forward’ button, and Bob's your uncle.
Origin
1930s: pet form of the given name Robert.