Word.ws English Dictionary

drib

/ˈdɹɪb/

drib verb: to cut off; chop off.

Verb

drib (third-person singular simple present dribs, present participle dribbing, simple past and past participle dribbed)

  1. (transitive) To cut off; chop off.
  2. (transitive) To cut off little by little; cheat by small and reiterated tricks; purloin.
  3. (transitive) To entice step by step.
    • With daily Lies ſhe dribs thee into Coſt; / That Ear-ring dropt a Stone, that Ring is loſt: / They often borrow what they never pay; / What e'er you lend her think it thrown away.a. 1701, [John] Dryden, “Book I”, in Ovid, Ovid’s Art of Love. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson […], published 1709, →OCLC, page 32
  4. To appropriate unlawfully; to embezzle.
    • He who drives their bargains dribs a part.1693, Decimus Junius Juvenalis, Charles Dryden, transl., “[The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis.] The Seventh Satyr”, in The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis. Translated into English Verse. […]...
  5. (transitive) To shoot directly at short range.
  6. (intransitive) To shoot at a mark at short range.
  7. (transitive) To shoot (a shaft) so as to pierce on the descent.
    • Not at first sight, nor with a dribbèd shot, / Love gave the wound […]c. 1580s, Philip Sidney, “Astrophel and Stella”, in [Mary Sidney], editor, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia […] [The New Arcadia], 3rd edition, London: […] [John Windet] for William Ponsonbie...
  8. (UK, dialectal, transitive) To beat; thrash; drub.
  9. (UK, dialectal, transitive) To scold.
  10. (UK, dialectal, transitive, marbles) To strike another player's marble when playing from the trigger.

Noun

drib (plural dribs)

  1. (obsolete) A drop.
    • squandering his money in dribs to the poora. 1772, Rupert Barber, An Answer to the Christmas-Box

drib meaning in Tamil

drib in Tamil

நறுக்கு

Forms of drib

Verb
third-person singular presentdribs
present participledribbing
past participledribbed
pastdribbed
Noun
pluraldribs

Origin of drib

From dialectal English drib (compare also drub), a variant from Middle English drepen (“to hit, strike, slay”), from Old English drepan (“to strike, kill, overcome”), from Proto-Germanic *drepaną (“to hit, strike”).

From a variant of drip.

Words formed from drib

Words that rhyme with drib

11 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about drib

What does drib mean?
Drib means to cut off; chop off.
What is drib in Tamil?
Drib in Tamil is நறுக்கு. See Drib meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is drib?
Drib can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce drib?
Drib is pronounced /ˈdɹɪb/.
What is the past tense of drib?
The past tense of drib is dribbed.

Words near drib in the dictionary

  1. dreys
  2. DRF
  3. DRFs
  4. DRI
  5. driable
  6. drib
  7. dribbed
  8. dribber
  9. dribbers
  10. dribbing
  11. dribble

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: drib (page history and authors); drib (Tamil Wiktionary) (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-drib.wav.

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