Word.ws English Dictionary

bob

/bɒb//bɑb/

bob verb: to move gently and vertically, in either a single motion or repeatedly up and down, at or near the surface of a body of water, or similar medium. Also the clipping of shishkabob.

Verb (1)

bob (third-person singular simple present bobs, present participle bobbing, simple past and past participle bobbed)

  1. (intransitive) To move gently and vertically, in either a single motion or repeatedly up and down, at or near the surface of a body of water, or similar medium.
    • The cork bobbed gently in the calm water.
    • The ball, which we had thought lost, suddenly bobbed up out of the water.
    Synonyms:
    surge
  2. (transitive) To move (something) as though it were bobbing in water.
    • I bobbed my head underwater and saw the goldfish.
    • bob one’s head
    1. (transitive, with-on) To perform oral sex on someone.
      • She bobbed on his knob.
  3. To curtsy.
  4. To strike with a quick, light blow; to tap.
    • And if any man hapned, by longe sittynge, to slepe, or, by any other countenance, to shewe him selfe to be weary, he was sodaynly bobbed on the face by the seruantes of Nero, […]1531, Thomas Elyot, “In what wise musike may be to a noble man necessarie: and what modestie ought to be therin”, in Ernest Rhys, editor, The Boke Named the Governour […] (Everyman’s Library)...
    • Lo, lo, lo, lo, what modicums of wit he vtters, his euaſions haue eares thus long, I haue bobd his braine more then he has beate my bones.c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, The Famous Historie of Troylus and Cresseid. […] (First Quarto), London: […] G[eorge] Eld for R[ichard] Bonian and H[enry] Walley, […], published 1609...
  5. (intransitive) Synonym of blob (“catch eels using worms strung on thread”).
    • After they had had supper Frank said, Do you remember those men whom we saw near Norwich, who sat in small boats all the night long, and with a line in each hand, bobbed for eels?1876, George Christopher Davies, The Swan and Her Crew, page 134
    Synonyms:
    blob

Noun (1)

bob (plural bobs)

  1. A bobbing motion; a quick up and down movement.
    • a bob of the head
  2. A curtsy.
  3. A bobber (buoyant fishing device).
    • Or yellow bobs turn’d up before the plough / Are chiefest baits, with cork and lead enough.1613, John Dennys, The Secrets of Angling
  4. Any of various hesperiid butterflies.

Noun (2)

bob (plural bobs)

  1. A bob haircut.
    • Whether your hair covers your head in short curls, a pert pixie cut, smooth braids, or a long bob, do yourself a good turn by finding the styles which are most becoming to you.1955, Adah Broadbent, Teen-Age Glamor, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, page 59
    Synonyms:
    bob cut
  2. Any round object attached loosely to a flexible line, a rod, a body part etc., so that it may swing when hanging from it.
    • Ecod! I have got them. Here they are. My cousin Con's necklaces, bobs and all.1773, Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer
  3. The dangling mass of a pendulum or plumb line.
  4. The docked tail of a horse.
  5. The short runner of a sled.
  6. A bobsleigh.
  7. A small wheel, made of leather, with rounded edges, used in polishing spoons, etc.
  8. A working beam in a steam engine.
  9. A particular style of ringing changes on bells.
  10. A blow; a shake or jog; a rap, as with the fist.
  11. (obsolete) A knot or short curl of hair; also, a bob wig.
    • A plain brown bob he wore.1737, William Shenstone, The Extent of Cookery
  12. (obsolete) The refrain of a song.
    • Ay, Ay, and Then to Bed, ſays the Bride. This Girl did but ſpeak the Widows Mind; for let Fleſh and Blood pretend what it will, to Bed, to Bed, will be the Bob of the Song.1692, Roger L’Estrange, “[The Fables of Abstemius, &c.] Fab[le] CCLXXXIII. A Widow had a mind to Marry.”, in Fables, of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists: […], London: […] R[ichard] Sare, […]...
  13. A short line ending a stanza of a poem.
  14. (obsolete) A jeer; a sharp jest or taunt.
    • Hee, that a Foole doth very wiſely hit,
      Doth very fooliſhly, although he ſmart,
      Seeme ſenſeleſſe of the bob.c. 1598–1600 (date written), William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...

Verb (2)

bob (third-person singular simple present bobs, present participle bobbing, simple past and past participle bobbed)

  1. (transitive) To cut (hair) into a bob haircut.
    • I got my hair bobbed. How do you like it?
    • [Shangai Lily:]There's only one thing I wouldn't have done, Doc.
      [Harvey:] What, for instance?
      [Shangai Lily:] I wouldn't have bobbed my hair.1932, Jules Furthman, Shanghai Express
  2. (transitive) To shorten by cutting; to dock; to crop.
  3. To bobsleigh.

Noun (3)

bob (plural bob or (rare) bobs)

  1. (Australia, Kenya, New Zealand, UK, dated, historical) A shilling.
    • One of the bottlenosed fraternity it was went by the name of James Wought alias Saphiro alias Spark and Spiro, put an ad in the papers saying he'd give a passage to Canada for twenty bob.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 12: Cyclops]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part II [Odyssey], page 308
    • “’Ere y’are, the best rig-out you ever ’ad. A tosheroon [half a crown]^([sic]) for the coat, two ’ogs for the trousers, one and a tanner for the boots, and a ’og for the cap and scarf. That’s seven bob.”1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XXIX, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC, pages 214–215
  2. (Australia, dated, slang) A 10-cent coin, ten cents.
  3. (slang) An unspecified small amount of money.
    • I could have saved myself a few bob buying it somewhere else.
    • A great many visitors are expected. They will take pictures of each other under the cherry blossoms and—the Chamber of Commerce hopes—spend a few bobs for hot logs, gasoline, eastern finery and souvenirs of the nation’s capital.1949 March 23, “Capital Planning For Cherry Blossom Festival On April 3”, in Warren Times-Mirror, volume forty-nine, Warren, Pa., page twelve, column 1

Noun (4)

bob (plural bobs)

  1. A graphical element, resembling a hardware sprite, that can be blitted around the screen in large numbers.
    • The bob list determines the drawing priority […]1986, Eugene P Mortimore, Amiga programmer's handbook, Volumes 1-2
    • IMHO, youd ^([sic]) be better doing other things with the CPU and letting the blitter draw bobs, esp on a machine with fast ram.1995, John Girvin, “Blitting bobs”, in comp.sys.amiga.programmer (Usenet)

Proper noun capitalized: Bob

Bob (plural Bobs)

  1. A diminutive of the male given name Robert.
    • Miramax Films cofounders Bob and Harvey Weinstein will end their successful, but often tumultuous, 12-year relationship with The Walt Disney Company to launch their own media company.2005 March 30, “Miramax founders leave Disney”, in The Guardian
    • For the last decade at least, the trend seems to be that more untraditional names are being chosen over the Bobs, the Toms, the Sues and the Marys.2009 April 25, “Meet Number 16 Bus Shelter”, in Austin Daily Herald, archived from the original on 20 Jul 2025
  2. The person or system receiving a message or signal from a source conventionally known as Alice.
    • The key that Alice and Bob are to share cannot be transmitted in the clear. Either it must be enciphered when sent, or Alice and Bob must derive it without an exhange of data from which the key can be derived.2003, Matt Bishop, Computer Security: Art and Science, Addison-Wesley Professional, →ISBN, page 247
    Synonyms:
    Party B
  3. (euphemistic) God.

Noun (5) capitalized: Bob

Bob (plural Bobs)

  1. A generic male person.
    • It's so simple, even Bob from accounting could do it.
    Synonyms:
    Jack, Joe

Noun (6) capitalized: BOB

BOB (plural BOBs)

  1. (humorous) Vibrator (device designed to stimulate a woman's genitals).

Adjective capitalized: BOB

BOB (not comparable)

  1. Back-of-the-book; denoting those stamps in a catalogue that are not used for the payment of regular postage fees, and are displayed separately in the catalogue after that listing; the division between these two groups varies with the publisher.

Noun (7) capitalized: BOB

BOB (uncountable)

  1. (abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of bur oak blight (“a fungal disease of plants”).

Also used as

bob is also the clipping of shishkabob.

bob meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali

bob in Hindi

बॉब

bob in Marathi

बॉबकडे

bob in Urdu

بوب

bob in Bengali

বব-এর কাছে
More languagesFewer languages
bob in Telugu
బాబ్, బాబ్కు
bob in Malayalam
ബോബിലേക്ക്
bob in Kannada
ಬಾಬ್
bob in Punjabi
ਬੌਬ
bob in Gujarati
બોબને
bob in Odia
ବୋବ୍, ବବ୍, ବାବ୍

Examples of bob in a sentence

  • The flowers were bobbing in the wind.
  • […] I have bob'd your vviſe Guardian Mayor too, vvho, I hear, is crackt-brain'd yonder for loſs of his Heireſs, vvhom I have atchieved and married here in ſpite of ye by dint of Brain and Merit.[1703], Tho[mas] d’Urfey, The Old Mode & the New, or, Country Miss with Her Furbeloe. A Comedy. […], London: […] Bernard Lintott, and sold...
  • And I was just commending my soul to God and thinking that this was where my new flannel trousers got about thirty bobs' worth of value bitten out of them, […]1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XVII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:
  • Changes: This release adds 2 new effects (bobs and unlimited bobs), has a GFX directory for sharing graphics, adds utility functions to the common code2002, demoeffects, “Demotized 0.0.1 - A collection of demo effects from the early days of the demo scene.”, in fm.announce (Usenet):

All 40 example sentences with bob

Synonyms of bob

Forms of bob

Verb
third-person singular presentbobs
present participlebobbing
past participlebobbed
pastbobbed
Noun
pluralbobs
pluralbob
pluralBobs
pluralBOBs
plural (rare)bobs
Proper noun
pluralBobs

Past tense of bob: bobbed

Plural of bob: bobs

Origin of bob

From Middle English bobben (“to move up and down or back and forth”), of uncertain origin. Compare Scots bob (“to mark, dance with a bobbing motion”), Icelandic boppa (“to wave up and down”), Swedish bobba (“to bob”), Faroese bøbbur (“something that rises or stands up; top”), Dutch dobberen (“to float, bob”).

From Middle English bobbe (“a cluster (of fruit); a twig with its leaves, a spray”), perhaps of Celtic origin (compare Irish baban "tassel, cluster," Gaelic babag).

Blend of blitter object.

Words formed from bob

Phrases with bob

12 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with bob

20 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about bob

What does bob mean?
Bob means to move gently and vertically, in either a single motion or repeatedly up and down, at or near the surface of a body of water, or similar medium.
What is bob in Hindi?
Bob in Hindi is बॉब. See Bob meaning in Hindi.
How do you use bob in a sentence?
The flowers were bobbing in the wind.
What part of speech is bob?
Bob can be a verb, a noun, a proper noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce bob?
Bob is pronounced /bɒb/ (UK).
What is the past tense of bob?
The past tense of bob is bobbed.

Words near bob in the dictionary

  1. Boaty McBoatfaces
  2. Boaty McBoatfacing
  3. boatyard
  4. boatyards
  5. Boaz
  6. bob
  7. Bob Andy pie
  8. Bob Andy pies
  9. Bob Cratchit
  10. bob cut
  11. bob cuts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bob (page history and authors); Bob (page history and authors); BOB (page history and authors); bob (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bob (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bob (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bob (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bob (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bob (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bob (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bob (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bob (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bob (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: EN-AU ck1 bob.ogg, En-us-bob.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Back ache-Bob.wav.

Cite this entry: “bob.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bob. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.