slubber

English

Etymology

Compare Danish slubbre (“to swallow, to sup up”), and English slabber.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈslʌbə(ɹ)/
• Rhymes: -ʌbə(ɹ)

Verb

slubber (third-person singular simple present slubbers, present participle slubbering, simple past and past participle slubbered)

1. To do hastily, imperfectly, or sloppily.
   • c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene viii], page 171:

     […] he [Antonio] answered, do not so,
     Slubber not business for my sake, Bassanio,
     But stay the very riping of the time

2. To daub; to stain; to cover carelessly.
   • 1641 May, John Milton, Of Reformation Touching Church-Discipline in England: And the Cavvses that hitherto have Hindred it; republished as Will Taliaferro Hale, editor, Of Reformation Touching Church-Discipline in England (Yale Studies in English; LIV), New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1916, →OCLC:

     There is no art that hath more […] slubbered with aphorisming pedantry than the art of policy.

3. To slobber.
   • 1914, Jack London, chapter 33, in Mutiny of the Elsinore:

     It grows colder, and grayer, and penguins cry in the night, and huge amphibians moan and slubber.

Noun

slubber (plural slubbers)

1. A person who, or a machine which, slubs.

References

• Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (1989)
• Random House Webster's Unabridged Electronic Dictionary (1987-1996)

Anagrams

• burbles, lubbers, rebulbs, rubbles