Word.ws English Dictionary

sob

UK/sɒb//sɑb/

sob noun: a cry with a short, sudden expulsion of breath.

Noun (1)

sob (plural sobs)

  1. A cry with a short, sudden expulsion of breath.
  2. (onomatopoeic) The sound of sob.
    • “My husband, alas! whom I now (sob, sob) mourn,
    • A short time since (sob) to this grave (sob) was borne;
    • And (sob) he lies buried in this (sob, sob) grave.”1874, George Carter Stent, The Jade Chaplet in Twenty-four Beads, page 9

Verb (1)

sob (third-person singular simple present sobs, present participle sobbing, simple past and past participle sobbed)

  1. (intransitive) To weep with convulsive gasps.
    • She was sobbing because she was feeling very miserable.
    • She sigh'd, she sobb'd, and, furious with despair, / She rent her garments, and she tore her hair.1697, Virgil, “Pastoral 5”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC
  2. (transitive) To say (something) while sobbing.
    • "He doesn't love me!" she sobbed.

Verb (2)

sob (third-person singular simple present sobs, present participle sobbing, simple past and past participle sobbed)

  1. To soak.
    • the Tree, being sobbed and wet, ſwells the Wood1707, J[ohn] Mortimer, The Whole Art of Husbandry; or, The Way of Managing and Improving of Land. […], London: […] J[ohn] H[umphreys] for H[enry] Mortlock […], and J[onathan] Robinson […], →OCLC

Noun (2) capitalized: SOB

US/ˌɛs oʊ ˈbi/

SOB (countable and uncountable, plural SOBs)

  1. (abbreviation, countable, initialism, slang, vulgar) Initialism of son of a bitch.
    • Voicing her frustration on the case’s progress, Darlene told the Dayton Daily News, “Up to six months ago, I wanted the SOBs killed. Now I don’t care. I just want to know what happened, and where the body is, and where the remains will be found. […]”2026 August 6, Nicholas Muhoro, quoting Darlene Farrell, “An Ohio Teen Vanished During a One-Mile Drive in 1994. Her Locked Car Was Found Hours Later”, in Skip Boring, archived from the original on...
  2. (abbreviation, initialism, uncountable) Initialism of shortness of breath.
  3. (abbreviation, in plural, initialism) Initialism of souls on board.
  4. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of sum of best.
  5. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of start of business.
    Synonyms:
    BOD, SOD
    Antonyms:
    EOB, COB, EOD, EOW
  6. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of share of business.
  7. (abbreviation, countable, initialism) Initialism of seal on a bedsheet, used humorously to recall the first sense

sob meaning in Hindi, Tagalog, Arabic and Persian

sob in Hindi

weep with convulsive gasps
मुसमुसाना musmusānā

sob in Tagalog

a cry with a short, sudden expulsion of breath
hikbi

sob in Arabic

a cry with a short, sudden expulsion of breath
شهيق šahīq, شهقة šahqa
weep with convulsive gasps
شَهِقَ šahiqa

sob in Persian

a cry with a short, sudden expulsion of breath
هق, هقهق
weep with convulsive gasps
هقیدن
say (something) while sobbing
هقیدن, هقگفتن
More languagesFewer languages
sob in Vietnamese
khóc thổn thức, thổn thức, khóc hu hu

Examples of sob in a sentence

  • Fred was known for his callousness; local panhandlers had long since learned not to try their sob stories on him.
  • E seized Asu and clasped her close, eir eyes closed tightly as e sobbed eir relief.
  • There is silence, then the sound of weeping, which escalates to heart-rending, gasping sobs.

All 40 example sentences with sob

Synonyms of sob

Antonyms

Forms of sob

Noun
pluralsobs
pluralSOBs
Verb
third-person singular presentsobs
present participlesobbing
past participlesobbed
pastsobbed

Past tense of sob: sobbed

Plural of sob: sobs

Origin of sob

From Middle English sobben, perhaps from Middle Low German sabben (“to drool, slobber, salivate”). Cognate with West Frisian sabje, sobje (“to suck”), Dutch zabben, sabbelen (“to suck”), zabberen (“to drool”), German Low German sabbeln, severn (“to drool”), German sabbern (“to drool, slobber”), Norwegian sabbe (“to spill, drop, make a mess”). Compare also Old English sēofian (“to lament”), German saufen (“to drink, swig”).

See sop.

Words formed from sob

Phrases with sob

Words that rhyme with sob

20 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about sob

What does sob mean?
Sob means a cry with a short, sudden expulsion of breath.
What is sob in Hindi?
Sob in Hindi is मुसमुसाना (musmusānā). See Sob meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is sob?
Sob can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce sob?
Sob is pronounced /sɒb/ (UK).
What is the plural of sob?
The plural of sob is sobs.

Words near sob in the dictionary

  1. SOAs
  2. Soave
  3. Soaves
  4. Soay
  5. Soays
  6. sob
  7. sob sister
  8. sob sisters
  9. SOB stew
  10. sob stories
  11. sob story

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sob (page history and authors); SOB (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-us-sob.ogg.

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