thob
/θɑb/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To engage in wishful thinking; to believe something regardless of evidence because it aligns with one's opinion; to rationalize.
Intransitive verb
Example Sentences
- "Oh, there's no possible way of distinguishing the ideas. Everything depends on how you regard them. If you dearly love a theory, you are thobbing. If you are curious about it, you are not thobbing."
- "It is by no means merely the uneducated who thob. Men of science have always thobbed, helping out fact with notions that appealed to them or were already well settled in their minds."
- "In the United States, and in what Kipling called the Five Free Nations, all men are granted the right to hold what opinions and beliefs they choose; and so thobbing is free, even as all emotional thinking is free—at least in some regions. And the sad thing is that thobbing is easy and required thinking is hard."
- "Your best protection against thobbing is to develop the habit of thinking about your thinking. (The technical name for this activity is metacognition.) More specifically, be aware of your initial feelings about problems and issues, particularly those that prompt you to take a stand immediately, without examining the evidence or weighing competing views."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *teng-der. Proto-Germanic *þankijaną Proto-West Germanic *þankijan Old English þenċan Middle English thinken English thinkacronym English opinionacronym Proto-Indo-European *h₁ep-der. Proto-Indo-European *h₁épsder. Proto-Indo-European *h₁épider. Proto-Indo-European *h₁pi Proto-Germanic *bider. Proto-Germanic *bi- Proto-West Germanic *bi- Proto-Indo-European *lewbʰ-der. Proto-Germanic *laubō Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Germanic *-janą Proto-Germanic *laubijaną Proto-West Germanic *laubijan Proto-West Germanic *bilaubijan Old English belīefan Middle English bileven English believeacronym English thob Coined by American author and schoolteacher Henshaw Ward in 1926 in his book Thobbing: A Seat at the Circus of the Intellect, as an acronym of think, opinion and believe: "When a person thinks without curiosity, has an opinion because he likes it, believes what is handy—then he THOBs."
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /θɑb/
- British English: /θɒb/