Word.ws English Dictionary

hobnail

hobnail noun: a short nail with a thick head, typically used in boot soles.

Noun

hobnail (plural hobnails)

  1. A short nail with a thick head, typically used in boot soles.
  2. (obsolete) A yokel; a rustic.
    • Next, the word Politician is not us'd to his maw, and therupon he plays the most notorious hobbihors, jesting and frisking in the luxury of his non-sense with such poor fetches to cog a laughter from us, that no antic hobnaile at a Morris, but is more hansomly facetious.1645 March 14 (Gregorian calendar), J[ohn] M[ilton], Colasterion: A Reply to a Nameles Answer against The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. […], [London?]: [s.n.], →OCLC
    • There lay Tom; hobnail Tom! a bacon-munching, reckless, beer-swilling animal! and yet a man …1859, George Meredith, chapter 9, in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. A History of Father and Son. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC

Verb

hobnail (third-person singular simple present hobnails, present participle hobnailing, simple past and past participle hobnailed)

  1. To fit with hobnails.
    • a machine for the hobnailing of shoes
  2. (archaic, transitive) To tread down roughly, as with hobnailed shoes.
    • Your rights and charters hobnailed into slush.1875, Tennyson, Queen Mary

hobnail meaning in Tamil and Kannada

hobnail in Tamil

செருப்பு, கண்ணாடியில் சிறுகுமிழ்கள் கொண்ட பாணி

hobnail in Kannada

ದಪ್ಪತಲೆಯಾಣಿ

Forms of hobnail

Noun
pluralhobnails
Verb
third-person singular presenthobnails
present participlehobnailing
past participlehobnailed
pasthobnailed

Origin of hobnail

From hob + nail. The oldest attestation is in William Shakespeare, but he likely did not coin the term.

Words formed from hobnail

Phrases with hobnail

Questions about hobnail

What does hobnail mean?
Hobnail means a short nail with a thick head, typically used in boot soles.
What is hobnail in Tamil?
Hobnail in Tamil is செருப்பு, கண்ணாடியில் சிறுகுமிழ்கள் கொண்ட பாணி. See Hobnail meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is hobnail?
Hobnail can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of hobnail?
The plural of hobnail is hobnails.

Words near hobnail in the dictionary

  1. hoblins
  2. hoblob
  3. hoblobs
  4. Hobls
  5. Hoblyn
  6. hobnail
  7. hobnail boot
  8. hobnail boots
  9. hobnail liver
  10. hobnail livers
  11. hobnailed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hobnail (page history and authors); hobnail (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hobnail (Kannada 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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Cite this entry: “hobnail.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hobnail. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.