Also 5–7 iobbe, 7–8 jobb: see also JAB. [app. onomatopæic, expressing the sound or effect of an abruptly arrested stab.]
1. trans. To pierce to a small depth with a forcible but abruptly arrested action, as with the point of something; to peck, dab, stab, prod, punch; to hurt a horse’s mouth with the bit; in pugilistic language, to strike with a sharp or cutting stroke.
c. 1490. Promp. Parv., 36/1 (MS. K.). Byllen or iobbyn as bryddys (H., P. iobbyn with the byl), rostro.
c. 1537. Thersites, in Four Old Plays (1848), 79. Jynkyn Jacon that iobbed iolye Jone.
1560. Daus, trans. Sleidane’s Comm., X. 130. Then caught he a boore speare … and as he laie iobbed him in with the staffe heade [iacentem pila transverberat].
1741. E. Smith, Compl. Housew. (1750), 199. With a small bodkin job the oranges as they are boiling, to let the Syrup into them.
1818. Sporting Mag., II. 189. He measured his distance accurately, and jobbed his adversary about the head.
1844. Dickens, Mart. Chuz., xxxiii. He had ‘jobbed out’ the eye of one gentleman.
1860. Reade, Cloister & H., xxiv. He … drew his long knife, and … prepared to job the huge brute as soon as it should mount within reach.
1884. Baring-Gould, Mehalah, v. 63. Let the horse go, but don’t job his mouth in that way.
2. To thrust (something pointed) abruptly into something else. † To job faces, ludicrously used for ‘to kiss’ (obs.).
1573. Tusser, Husb. (1878), 89. If peacock and turkey leaue iobbing their bex.
1600. Heywood, 1 Edw. IV., III. i. What the Dickens is it loue that makes ye prate to me so fondly? By my fathers soule, I would I had iobd faces with you.
1674. Josselyn, Voy. New Eng., 186. Two crooked bones growing upon the top of the heart, which as she bowed her body … would job their points into one and the same place.
1741. Compl. Fam. Piece, III. 511. Immediately jobb a Penknife into the Throat.
a. 1795. Robin Hood & Maid Marian, xiv. in Child, Ballads (1888), III. V. cl. 219/2. With kind embraces, and jobbing of faces.
1845. Stocqueler, Hand-bk. Brit. India (1854), 337. In some parts of India our sportsmen throw the spear—in others they thrust or job it.
3. intr. To peck (at) as a bird; to thrust (at) so as to stab or pierce; to penetrate into.
1566. Drury, Lett. to Cecil, 27 March (P.R.O., St. Pap. Dom., Borders II. 131 b). In Iobbyng att hym [Rizzio] so meny att onse.
1579–80. North, Plutarch, Nicias, 457. Upon that palm-tree sate certain crows many daies … and never left pecking and jobbing at the fruit of it.
1603. Holland, trans. Plutarch’s Rom. Quest. (1892), 33. After he [the woodpecker] hath jobbed and pecked into it [the oak] as farre as to the very marrow and heart thereof.
1703. Moxon, Mech. Exerc., 169. The Tool will job into softer parts of the Stuff.
1882. Jessopp, in 19th Cent., Nov., 733. Pigmies of the Meiocene … jobbing at the eyes of some mammoth floundering in a hole.
