Also adobi, -ie. [Sp.; f. adob-ar to daub, to plaster:—late L. adobāre; see ADUB. (Dozy derives the Sp. from Arab. aṭ-ṭōb, = al-ṭob, prob. a Coptic tōb, Egypt. hierog. t·b, of same meaning; but Minsheu, 1623, has ‘Adobe de barro, mortar, clay.’) Adopted in U.S. from Mexico, and popularly made into dobie. In Eng. sometimes with e mute, after mod.Fr. (in Littré’s Supp.).] An unburnt brick dried in the sun.
1834. J. L. Stephens, Centr. Amer. (1854), 224. The houses in Costa Rica are … built of adobes or undried bricks two feet long and one broad, made of clay mixed with straw to give adhesion.
1865. E. B. Tylor, Early Hist. Man., iv. 99. Adobe, in which form and as dobie, it is current among the English-speaking population of America.
1879. E. S. Bridges, Round the World, 12. He … has a nice little adobi house.
1880. Earl Dunraven, in 19th Cent., Oct., 593. Small settlements … consisting only of two or three mud, or rather adobe, houses.
