cobbing

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English

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Etymology

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From cob +‎ -ing.

Verb

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cobbing

  1. present participle and gerund of cob

Noun

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cobbing (countable and uncountable, plural cobbings)

  1. (military, prison) an unofficial form of punishment among the crew or prisoners involving blows to the buttocks from a piece of wood or a handsaw.
    • 1846, Henry Marshall, Military Miscellany, page 156:
      Previous to the infliction of cobbing, or booting, the delinquent is fairly tried by a court, consisting of–a president, the oldest soldier; members, next two oldest soldiers, youngest soldier, next youngest soldier.
  2. (mining) The manual separation of minerals in ore using a hammer.
    • 1868, Guido Küstel, A Treatise on Concentration of All Kinds of Ores, page 28:
      It is, therefore, always so arranged that the dressing progresses gradually through all the operations, beginning in the mine and ending with the cobbing, or, as the case may be. with the concentration.
    • 1884, Wheaton Bradish Kunhardt, The Practice of Ore Dressing in Europe, page 19:
      To-day, however, cobbing is still an important operation, carried out with a three-fold purpose: first, to separate pure masses of different minerals from one another and from adhereing pieces of gangue, preparing them at once for the market with qa minimum loss from comminution; secondly, to separate several classes of crussing ores according to the predominance of one or the other of the different minerals they contains; and lastly, to produce a classification according to the nature of the gangue.
    • 2018, Hailian Chen, Zinc for Coin and Brass, page 458:
      Wheeler provides greater detail on ore treatment, such as traditional cobbing and sorting methods.
  3. The production of cobs.
    • 1955, Sir Enoch Bruce Levy, Grasslands of New Zealand, page 64:
      In America, Canada, and Central Europe, for example, snow lies feet deep on the ground in the winter, and the summers are sufficiently hot to enable maize to be grown successfully for cobbing,
    • 1995, Maize research for stress environments, page 50:
      There were highly significant differences in percent cobbing between the two fertilizer levels, with the unfertilized treatment producing significantly more cobs than the fertilized treatment.
    • 2020, A. Solaimalai, P. Anantharaju, S. Irulandi, Maize Crop:
      Symptom is stunting of plant, premature wilting of leaves, chlorotic stripes on young leaves, leaf purpling, excessive tillering and cobbing and formation of barren cobs.