Stubbed

ppl. a. [f. STUB v.¹ + -ED¹.]

  1.  Of trees: Cut down to a stub; cut off near the ground; also, deprived of branches or pollarded.

1575.  Gascoigne, Posies, Hearbes (1907), 343. Like a stubbed thorne.

1594.  Nashe, Unfort. Trav., G 3. After him followed the knight of the Owle, whose armor was a stubd tree ouergrowne with iuie.

1627.  Drayton, Nimphidia, lvi. A paine he in his Head-peece feeles, Against a stubbed Tree he reeles.

1793.  W. Blake, Amer., 83. They cannot bring the stubbèd oak to overgrow the hills.

1819.  Keats, Otho, III. i. 35. What, man, do you mistake the hollow sky For a throng’d tavern, and these stubbed trees For old serge hangings?

1856.  Kingsley, Misc. (1859), II. 16. The trunk looking like an old stubbed oak.

  b.  Of ground: Having the stubs removed; grubbed up.

1573–80.  Tusser, Husb. (1878), 73. In stubbed plot, fill hole with clot.

  2.  Short and thick, stumpy. ? Obs. exc. dial.

a. 1529.  Skelton, E. Rummyng, 422. Her legges … were sturdy and stubbed.

1611.  Coryat, Crudities, 42. Their [sc. ostriches] heads are covered all with small stubbed feathers.

1630.  R. Johnson, Kingd. & Commw., 12. The Tartar is a stubbed squat fellow, hard bred, and such are their horses.

1658.  Evelyn, Fr. Gard. (1675), 164. Three years you must forbear to cut, that the plant may be strong, and not stubbed.

1687.  Miége, Gt. Fr. Dict., II. Stubbed, short and well set, trapu, membru. A stubbed Fellow, un Trapu.

1696.  E. Lhwyd, in Phil. Trans., XXVII. 464. With Bills more stubbed and bigger than that of a Bull-finch.

1769.  Gray, Jrnl., 13 Oct., Poems (1775), 375. The rock … rises perpendicular, with stubbed yew-trees and shrubs staring from its side.

1868.  Rep. U.S. Commissioner Agric. (1869), 254. Trimming does thicken the surface of the hedge by causing a stubbed, stooling form of growth.

1883.  S. C. Hall, Retrospect, II. 206. A short, thick, stubbed, ungainly and ungraceful form.

  † b.  Stubbed boy: a ‘hobbledehoy.’ Obs.

16[?].  Chalkhill, Thealma & Clearchus (1683), 71. Memnon himself keeps home, attended on But by a stubbed Boy.

1722.  Hist. & Antiq. Glastonbury, Author’s Pref. n 4, note. Saunders must be a stubbed Boy, if not a Man, at the Dissolution of Abbeys.

  3.  Reduced to a stub; worn down to a stub; (of hair) cut close to the skin, stubbly.

1621.  Sanderson, Serm., Ad Pop., iv. (1674), I. 213. Thy new broom, that now sweepeth clean all discontents from thee, will soon grow stubbed.

1631.  [Mabbe], Celestina, VII. 84. She did pull out seuen teeth out of a fellowes head that was hang’d, with a paire of Pincers, such as you pull out stubbed haires withall.

1762.  Churchill, Ghost, II. 306. Hark! something scratches round the room! A Cat, a Rat, a stubb’d Birch-broom.

1802.  Trans. Soc. Arts, XX. 172. Effectually done … by a stubbed birch broom.

  4.  Blunted at the point.

1610.  B. Jonson, Masque of Oberon, Wks. (1616), 977. To spight the coy Nymphes scornes, Hang vpon our stubbed hornes, Garlands, ribbands and fine poesies.

1675.  A. Browne, Appendix Art Paint., 26. Instead of the Rolls of Paper they make use of Stubbed Pencils; and some of them are stuffed with Cotton, and some others with Bombast.

1728.  Swift, Pastoral Dial., 3. While each with stubbed Knife remov’d the Roots That rais’d between the Stones their daily Shoots.

1854.  Miss Baker, Northampt. Gloss., Stubbed or Stubby, blunt-pointed, as the broad nib of a pen, thick, short.

1860.  O. W. Holmes, Elsie Venner, iii. The short, stubbed blade of his jack-knife.

  † b.  fig. Dull, not delicate or sensitive. Obs.

1744.  Berkeley, Siris, § 105. The hardness of stubbed vulgar constitutions.

  5.  Abounding in stubs.

1855.  Browning, Ch. Roland, xxv. Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood.

1898.  M. Hewlett, Forest Lovers, vi. He urged his horse over the stubbed heath.

  Hence Stubbedness, ‘a being short and thick.’

1727.  Bailey, vol. II.

1907.  J. B. Morrow, in L. A. Times, 29 Sept., IV 13/1. He is a solid man of common height, with … a thick mustache chopped down to stubbedness.