Also 7–8 libb. Now dial. [? repr. an OE. *lybban = MDu. lubben to maim, geld, f. Teut. root *luƀ-: see LEFT a.] trans. To castrate, geld, ‘cut.’
1396. [see libbing, below].
1500–20. Dunbar, Poems, lv. 5. Thair wyffis … baid tham betteis soun abyd At hame, and lib tham of the pockis.
1536. Bellenden, Cron. Scot. (1821), I. p. lv. The steirkis … ar … libbit to be oxin.
1597–8. Bp. Hall, Sat., II. vii. 19. Who pares his nailes, or libs his swine.
1607. Topsell, Four-f. Beasts, 324. They have used to lib their Horsses and take away their stones.
1618. Chapman, Hesiod, 37. The bellowing Bullock lib, and Gote.
1624. Massinger, Renegado, II. i. I am libbed in the breech already.
1649. Davenant, Love & Honour, IV. Dram. Wks. 1873, III. 164. Sure he is lib’d; he hath certainly No masculine business about him.
a. 1733. Shetland Acc., 28, in Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot. (1892), XXVI. 200. That none libb any beast upon Sunday.
1788. Marshall, Yorksh., II. 340. To Lib, to geld male lambs and calves (horses and pigs are ‘gelded’).
1855. Robinson, Whitby Gloss., Scribb’d and Libb’d, farmers’ terms, or rather they are used as one word,—castrated.
b. fig. (Cf. CASTRATE v. 4.)
1577. Fulke, Two Treat. agst. Papists, II. 250. In the latter end where he libbeth of the conclusion of Origens wordes, he translateth [etc.] … when he hath clipped, shauen, pared, gelded and falsified all that he can [etc.].
1621. Bp. Mountagu, Diatribæ, 419. Aristotle … wrote cxxvi. Bookes, or thereabout, περὶ πολιτειῶν … and yet none of these were libbed by Abbreuiators.
Hence Libbed ppl. a., Libbing vbl. sb.
1396. Whitby Abbey Rolls (Whitby Gloss.) Pro libbyng porcorum 10d.
1500–20. Dunbar, Poems, lv. 20. Sum … hes forsaekin all sic gammiss, That men callis libbing of the pockis.
a. 1600. Hist. Fryer Bacon, in Thoms, E. E. Prose Rom. (1858), I. 192. When the best libbing is.
1616. N. Riding Rec., II. 123. A libbed gilt.
1638. Ford, Fancies, I. ii. What a terrible sight to a libb’d breech is a sow-gelder!
c. 1693. Urquhart’s Rabelais, III. xxxi. 256. Like a libbed Eunuch.
1790. Burns, ‘Kind Sir, I’ve read your Paper.’ How libbet Italy was singin’.
