dob
UK/dɒb/US/dɑb/
dob verb: to report a person to someone in authority for a wrongdoing. (For transitive forms see dob in, dob on.). Also the initialism of date of birth.
Verb (1)
dob (third-person singular simple present dobs, present participle dobbing, simple past and past participle dobbed)
- To report a person to someone in authority for a wrongdoing. (For transitive forms see dob in, dob on.)
- Students often claimed that an act of informing was just ‘dobbing as a joke’ and therefore ‘not really dobbing’.1983, James Macpherson, The Feral Classroom, page 107
- Alex was concerned that if others thought he had dobbed, things would get even worse for him. Dobbing was the worst thing a student could do.2006, Ian Findley, Shared Responsibility: Beating Bullying in Australian Schools, page 67
- To play truant.
- Parents were taken to court 189 times in the Western region over the past five years because their children were ‘dobbing’ school.¶ The Education Minister John O’Dowd revealed the number of parents taken to court due to children being absent from school […]2015 October 11, Kevin Mullan, “189 parents in dock for ‘dobbing’”, in Londonderry Sentinel
Noun (1)
dob (plural dobs)
- A small amount of something, especially paste.
- Put a dob of butter on the potato, please.
- ‘Consequence will be, O Tegumai,’ said the Head Chief, ‘that we will make them understand it with sticks and stinging-nettles and dobs of mud; and if that doesn't teach them, we'll draw fine, freehand Tribal patterns on their backs with the cutty edges of mussel-shells. […] ’1903, Rudyard Kipling, The Tabu Tale, in Just So Stories (in the U.S. Scribner edition, but omitted from most British editions)
Verb (2)
dob (third-person singular simple present dobs, present participle dobbing, simple past and past participle dobbed)
- In the scouting movement, to chant dob to indicate that one will do one's best to follow the scouting laws.
- I used to get through the dibbing and dobbing all right but during the howling I usually rolled over backwards.2009, Clive James, Unreliable Memoirs, page 54
- Why were there 212 fatalities at the first boy scout camp? There wasn't much dybbing and dobbing at Robert Baden-Powell's first scout camp as the camp in question was in Mafeking and took place during a particularly nasty siege[…]2009, Justin Pollard, The Interesting Bits
Noun (2) capitalized: DOB
DOB (plural DOBs)
- Initialism of date of birth.
- Initialism of degree of bending.
Proper noun capitalized: DOB
DOB
- Initialism of Daughters of Bilitis The first organized and successful lesbian liberation organization in the United States.
- Initialism of 2 or 5-Dimethoxy-4-bromoamphetamine A psychedelic drug similar to 2C-B.
Noun (3) capitalized: DoB
DoB (plural DoBs)
- Initialism of date of birth.
- A-SSN verified on name, DoB and sex1995, Code of Federal Regulations, the Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration, page 554
- For those who treat horoscopes as gospel truth, the Supreme Court had dished out a bitter truth - the date of birth (DoB) of a person entered in a horoscope can never be given primacy over the DoB mentioned in his School Leaving Certificate (SLC). “Horoscope is a very weak material to prove age of...2005, Data India, Press Institute of India, page 233, columns 1–2
- Initialism of degree of bending.
- Through-the-thickness stress distribution characterized by the degree of bending (DoB) has a major effect on the fatigue behavior of tubular joints commonly found in steel offshore structures. The determination of DoB values is essential for improving the accuracy of fatigue life estimation using...2020 February, Hamid Ahmadi, Esmaeil Zavvar, “Degree of bending (DoB) in offshore tubular KT-joints under the axial, in-plane bending (IPB), and out-of-plane bending (OPB) loads”, in Applied Ocean...
Also used as
dob is also the initialism of date of birth.
Forms of dob
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | dobs |
| present participle | dobbing |
| past participle | dobbed |
| past | dobbed |
| Noun | |
| plural | dobs |
| alternative form | DOB |
| plural | DOBs |
| plural | DoBs |
Origin of dob
Uncertain. Possibly from Middle English dobben.
Probably variation of dab.
Initialism.
Words formed from dob
Phrases with dob
Words that rhyme with dob
Questions about dob
- What does dob mean?
- Dob means to report a person to someone in authority for a wrongdoing. (For transitive forms see dob in, dob on.).
- What part of speech is dob?
- Dob can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce dob?
- Dob is pronounced /dɑb/ (US).
- What is the past tense of dob?
- The past tense of dob is dobbed.
Words near dob in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dob (page history and authors); DOB (page history and authors); DoB (page history and authors). 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 dob.ogg.
Cite this entry: “dob.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dob. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.