local. [Related to CUB sb.2, or to the LG. words there referred to.]
1. = CUBBY-HOLE, -HOUSE.
1888. Christine Terhune Herrick, Housekeeping Made Easy, xvii. 163. The odds and ends relegated to this cubby [the lumber-closet].
1888. W. Somerset Word-bk., Cubby, Cubby-hole, an out-of-the-way snuggery, such as children are fond of creeping into: a hiding-place.
2. In Orkney and Shetland: A straw basket.
1868. D. Gorrie, Summ. & Wint. Orkneys, i. 69. Pack-ponies carried burdens like camels, or went ambling along under the equal-poised weight of pendent ‘cubbies.’
1887. Jamieson’s Dict. Suppl., Cubbie, a small cassie or basket, often made of heather.
Hence Cubby-hole, Cubby-house, a. a nursery or children’s name for a snug, cosy place; a little house built by children in play; b. a very small and confined room or closet.
1842. Akerman, Wiltsh. Gloss., Cubby-hole, a snug place.
1853. Kane, Grinnell Exp., xxvii. (1856), 226. One little fellow … scampered back again … to his cubby-hole on the deck.
1880. [Mary Allan-Olney], New Virginians, II. 122. There was a kind of cubby-house in the hay-shed, where the hay had been cut out.
1881. Leicestersh. Gloss., Cubby-house and Cubby-hutch, a hutch or coop for rabbits or other small animals.
1884. G. E. Waring, Jr. in Century Mag., XXIX. 45/1. Cubby holes, dark cellars, uninspected closets.
