cub
/kʌb/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.49 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
3
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A member of the Cub Scouts.
noun
The young of certain animals, chiefly large carnivorous mammals, including the bear, wolf, fox, lion and tiger.
noun
Synonym of cub reporter.
Example Sentences
- "Jones became a Cub as the result of a pre-season trade."
- "a Childe of Lacedemon suffered all his belly and gutts to be torne out by a Cubbe or young Foxe, which he had stolne, and kept close under his garment, rather then he would discover his theft."
- "O, thou dissembling cub! what wilt thou be / When time hath sowed a grizzle on thy case?"
- "He had also kept with him two wild young wives and several wilder cubs."
- "[...] I would rather have such a good mother in cub or kennel, than in my closet, or at my table."
- "Swain has interviewed 67 reporters on 16 metropolitan dailies in 10 cities — from cubs to veterans — who talk candidly […]"
Etymology
From earlier cubbe. Origin unknown. According to Pokorny, from Proto-Germanic *kubb-, from Proto-Indo-European *gup- (“round object, knoll”), from *gew- (“to bend, curve, convex, arch, vault”). Related terms include cup (cf. cupboard), coffin, cove, etc, essentially “chamber”, thus cub maybe initially derived from the sense “den”, or maybe “womb”. A probable cognate is also found in North Germanic: dialectal Swedish kubbe, kybbe, köbbe, kibb, Danish kippe (“calf”). Also compare Icelandic and Old Norse kobbi (“seal”), Old Irish cuib (“whelp”). Compare also English cob. Originally, the meaning was specifically "young fox", in which sense it has largely replaced English whelp.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /kʌb/
- British English: /kʌb/
Usage
Inflected Forms
Cubs (plural)
cubbe (alternative, obsolete)
cubs (present, singular)
cubbing (participle, present)
cubbed (participle, past)
cubbed (past)