Word.ws English Dictionary

thob

UK/θɒb/US/θɑb/

thob verb: to engage in wishful thinking; to believe something regardless of evidence because it aligns with one's opinion; to rationalize.

Verb

thob (third-person singular simple present thobs, present participle thobbing, simple past and past participle thobbed)

  1. (intransitive, rare) To engage in wishful thinking; to believe something regardless of evidence because it aligns with one's opinion; to rationalize.
    • Oh, there's no possible way of distinguishing the ideas. Everything depends on how you regard them. If you dearly love a theory, you are thobbing. If you are curious about it, you are not thobbing.1926, Henshaw Ward, “Studio Lecture”, in Thobbing: A Seat at the Circus of the Intellect, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, page 12
    • It is by no means merely the uneducated who thob. Men of science have always thobbed, helping out fact with notions that appealed to them or were already well settled in their minds.1928, Joseph Jastrow, Keeping Mentally Fit: A Guide to Everyday Psychology, New York: Greenberg, page 107
    Synonyms:
    wishcast

Synonyms of thob

Forms of thob

third-person singular presentthobs
present participlethobbing
past participlethobbed
pastthobbed

Origin of thob

Coined by American author and schoolteacher Henshaw Ward in 1926 in his book Thobbing: A Seat at the Circus of the Intellect, as an acronym of think, opinion and believe: "When a person thinks without curiosity, has an opinion because he likes it, believes what is handy—then he THOBs."

Words that rhyme with thob

20 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about thob

What does thob mean?
Thob means to engage in wishful thinking; to believe something regardless of evidence because it aligns with one's opinion; to rationalize.
What part of speech is thob?
Thob is a verb.
How do you pronounce thob?
Thob is pronounced /θɒb/ (UK).
What is the past tense of thob?
The past tense of thob is thobbed.

Words near thob in the dictionary

  1. tho't
  2. tho'ts
  3. Tho.
  4. thoa
  5. thoan
  6. thob
  7. thobbed
  8. thobbing
  9. thobe
  10. thobes
  11. thobs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thob (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: “thob.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/thob. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.