Word.ws English Dictionary

kibble

/ˈkɪbəl/

kibble verb: to grind coarsely.

Verb

kibble (third-person singular simple present kibbles, present participle kibbling, simple past and past participle kibbled)

  1. To grind coarsely.
    • kibbled oats

Noun (1)

kibble (countable and uncountable, plural kibbles)

  1. Something that has been kibbled, especially grain for use as animal feed.
    • The pope had already signaled his kids-over-kibbles stance in a 2014 interview with the Rome daily Il Messaggero. When asked whether some in society valued pets more than children, he said that it was a reality that reflected a “sign of cultural degeneration.”2022 January 6, Elisabetta Povoledo, “Pope Scolds Couples Who Choose Pets Over Kids”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
  2. Any artificial animal feed in pellet form.
  3. (figuratively) Food that is high in nutritional value yet tasteless.

Noun (2)

kibble (plural kibbles)

  1. An iron bucket used in mines for hoisting anything to the surface.

Noun (3)

kibble (plural kibbles)

  1. (historical) A mallet used in the game of trap ball.

Noun (4)

kibble (uncountable)

  1. (slang) In the Transformers fandom, pieces of a toy or figure necessary for one mode, but appearing out of place or unnecessary in the other.

Proper noun capitalized: Kibble

Kibble (plural Kibbles)

  1. A surname from Old English.

kibble meaning in Tamil

kibble in Tamil

சுரங்க வாளி

Forms of kibble

Verb
third-person singular presentkibbles
present participlekibbling
past participlekibbled
pastkibbled
Noun
pluralkibbles
Proper noun
pluralKibbles

Origin of kibble

Unknown; verb sense c. 1790, Shropshire dialect, perhaps variant of chip or derived from Etymology 2 below.

From German Kübel (“pail”), from Middle High German kübel, kubel (“bucket, bushel, measure of grain”), from Old High German kubil (“tub, bucket”), from Proto-West Germanic *kubil, from Proto-Germanic *kub- (“to be vaulted, arch”), from Proto-Indo-European *gew-, *gū- (“to bend, curve, arch, vault”). Alternatively, possibly from Vulgar Latin *cupia, from Latin cūpa.

Possibly from kibble (“animal feed”).

Words formed from kibble

Words that rhyme with kibble

4 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about kibble

What does kibble mean?
Kibble means to grind coarsely.
What is kibble in Tamil?
Kibble in Tamil is சுரங்க வாளி. See Kibble meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is kibble?
Kibble can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce kibble?
Kibble is pronounced /ˈkɪbəl/.
What is the past tense of kibble?
The past tense of kibble is kibbled.

Words near kibble in the dictionary

  1. kibbitzed
  2. kibbitzer
  3. kibbitzers
  4. kibbitzes
  5. kibbitzing
  6. kibble
  7. kibbled
  8. kibbler
  9. kibblers
  10. kibbles
  11. Kibblesmith

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kibble (page history and authors); Kibble (page history and authors); Kibble (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.

Last updated:

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

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