cobbler
/ˈkɑblɚ/
Frequency: 2.82 in modern English
Meaning
noun
A sheep left to the end to be sheared (for example, because its wool is filthy, or because it is difficult to catch).
Australian usage; New Zealand usage; Slang
noun
A person who cobbles (“to assemble or mend in an improvised or rough way”); a clumsy workman.
Obsolete
noun
An (iced) alcoholic drink containing spirit or wine, with lemon juice and sugar.
American usage
noun
A roadworker who lays cobbles.
noun
The shiny, hard seed of the horse chestnut tree (Aesculus hippocastanum), especially when used in the game of the same name (sense 1.2); a conker, a horse chestnut.
British usage
noun
Synonym of conkers (“a game for two players in which the participants each have a horse-chestnut (known as a cobbler (sense 1.1) or conker) suspended from a length of string, and take turns to strike their opponent's conker with their own with the object of destroying the opponent's conker before their own is destroyed”).
British usage
Example Sentences
- "This honest Cobler has done what he might: / That Statesmen in their Shoes might walk upright. / But rotten Shoes of Spannish running-leather: / No Coblers skill, can stitch them strong together."
- "[W]hat would they think of a French cobler cutting ſhoes for ſeveral of his fellow-ſubjects out of an old apple-tree?"
- "All honeſt jogg trotmen, who go on ſmoothly and dully, and write hiſtory and politics, and are praiſed; and who, had they been bred coblers, would all their lives have only mended ſhoes, but never made them."
- "But what of that vast number of the human kind who were always in the background? What of the hewers of wood and drawers of water, the swineherds, the shepherds, the carpenters, the hedgers and cobblers?"
- "Truely Sir, in reſpect of a fine Workman, / I am but as you would ſay, a Cobler."
- "[H]e produced a very large tumbler, piled up to the brim with little blocks of clear transparent ice, through which one or two thin slices of lemon, and a golden liquid of delicious appearance, appeared from the still depths below, to the loving eye of the spectator. […] "This wonderful invention, sir," said Mark, tenderly patting the empty glass, "is called a cobbler. Sherry cobbler when you name it long; cobbler, when you name it short.[…]""
Etymology
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈkɑblɚ/
- British English: /ˈkɒblə/
Usage
- Australian usage
- New Zealand usage
- Slang
- Obsolete
- American usage
- British usage