Word.ws English Dictionary

sobby

/ˈsɒbi/

sobby adjective: very sad; inclined to sob (weep with convulsive gasps).

Adjective (1)

sobby (comparative sobbier, superlative sobbiest)

  1. Very sad; inclined to sob (weep with convulsive gasps).
    • It began, 'Where is my wandering boy to-night?' and by the time she was through I was feeling so mushy and sobby that I put a five instead of a one into the plate by mistake.1903, George Horace Lorimer, Old Gorgon Graham
    • Every piece of furniture, from the threadbare sofa to the rickety center table, seems kind of sad and sobby.1917, Sewell Ford, Wilt Thou Torchy
  2. Resembling or characteristic of a sob.
    • a sobby sound

Adjective (2)

sobby (comparative sobbier, superlative sobbiest)

  1. (archaic) That has been sobbed (soaked); saturated with moisture.
    • Nobody knows who he was; but no matter how wet the leaves, how sobby the twigs, no matter if there was no fire in a mile of the camp, that fellow could start one.1882, Carlton McCarthy, Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865
    • The original building of the house, and its blood-stained foundation stones; the dead who had died of the pestilence that had raged afterward; the bodies carted by scores and buried in the sobby earth of the graveyard, whose trees loomed up through the broken window; […]1887, Thomas Nelson Page, “No Haid Pawn”, in In Ole Virginia; Or, Marse Chan and Other Stories, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner's Sons, pages 180–181

Forms of sobby

comparativesobbier
superlativesobbiest

Origin of sobby

From sob (“cry”) + -y.

From sob (“soak”) + -y.

Questions about sobby

What does sobby mean?
Sobby means very sad; inclined to sob (weep with convulsive gasps).
What part of speech is sobby?
Sobby is an adjective.
How do you pronounce sobby?
Sobby is pronounced /ˈsɒbi/.

Words near sobby in the dictionary

  1. sobbiest
  2. sobbin'
  3. sobbing
  4. sobbingly
  5. sobbings
  6. sobby
  7. Sobczak
  8. Sobczaks
  9. Sobczyk
  10. Sobczyks
  11. SoBe

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sobby (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-sobby.wav.

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