Word.ws English Dictionary

shab

/ʃæb/

shab noun: scabies.

Noun

shab (countable and uncountable, plural shabs)

  1. (UK, dialectal, obsolete) Scabies.
  2. (UK, dialectal, obsolete) A scab.

Verb (1)

shab (third-person singular simple present shabs, present participle shabbing, simple past and past participle shabbed)

  1. (obsolete) To scratch; to rub.
    • I have shabbed him off purely1698, George Farquhar, Love and a Bottle

Verb (2)

shab (third-person singular simple present shabs, present participle shabbing, simple past and past participle shabbed)

  1. (UK, dialectal, obsolete) To move (something, away or out of the way), to drive off.
    • Certain Nipnets intended to have sheltred themselves under Vncas; but he perceiving it would be distastful to the English, soon shab'd them off.1677, W. Howard, Narrative, postscript, T 3 b
    • I have shabb'd him off purely.1698 Farquhar, Love & Bottle, iv. iii
  2. (UK, slang, obsolete outside historical fiction) To skulk or sneak away.
    • […] and so the fat Parson shabb'd off,[…]1731, The Windsor Medley: Being a Choice Collection of Several Curious and Valuable Pieces in Prose and Verse: that Were Handed about in Print and Manuscript, During the Stay of the Court at...
    • We bided a moment as the push we were part of moved forward and took the opportunity to slip deftly back through it, thus shabbing off from our prey.2017 February 23, Jake Arnott, The Fatal Tree, Sceptre, →ISBN

Examples of shab in a sentence

  • […] but when that [money] was gone, and he had not as much ground, that he could call his own, as would sod a lark, they soon shabbed him off.1828, Thomas Crofton Croker, Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, page 212:
  • I hold the people in too much esteem, to shab them off with any thing of a secondary quality, whilst Providence has blessed me with the means of providing them the best.1840, John Pendleton Kennedy, Quodlibet: Containing Some Annals Thereof ..., page 61:

Forms of shab

Noun
pluralshabs
Verb
third-person singular presentshabs
present participleshabbing
past participleshabbed
pastshabbed

Origin of shab

From Middle English shabbe, schabbe, from Old English sċeabb, from Proto-West Germanic *skabb, from Proto-Germanic *skabbaz. Doublet of scab.

See scab.

Words that rhyme with shab

17 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about shab

What does shab mean?
Shab means scabies.
How do you use shab in a sentence?
[…] but when that [money] was gone, and he had not as much ground, that he could call his own, as would sod a lark, they soon shabbed him off.
What part of speech is shab?
Shab can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce shab?
Shab is pronounced /ʃæb/.
What is the plural of shab?
The plural of shab is shabs.

Words near shab in the dictionary

  1. Shaangxi
  2. Shaanxi
  3. Shaanzhong
  4. Shaath
  5. shaatnez
  6. shab
  7. Shabak
  8. Shabaki
  9. Shabakism
  10. Shaban
  11. shabander

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shab (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-shab.wav.

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