Sc. Forms: 6 sebowe, pl. sybees, sybbow, 7 pl. sybeis, 8 pl. sybouse, 8– sybo, 9 seybo(w, se(i)bow, sibow, syboe, sibba, saybee, seybie, 7– sybow. [Sc. variant of CIBOL, CIBOULE, q.v.] Orig. = CHIBOL 1; now, a young or spring onion with the green stalk attached = CHIBOL 2.
1574. in Row, Hist. Kirk (Wodrow Soc.), 50. That teind sybbows, leeks, kaill, and onyons, be discharged.
1580. Min., in D. D. Black, Hist. Brechin, iii. (1867), 44. One decree is against John Thomson for 40s. resting of £8 due James Watt for sybees, that grew in his yard—rather a large quantity of the onion species!
1653. Culross Session Minutes. Cited for pulling sybows on the Lords Day.
1659. Melrose Regality Rec. (S.H.S., 1914), 218. [The agreed-on price of] certane sybeis [bought from him].
c. 1682. F. Sempill, Blythsome Wedding, 55. With sybows and rifarts and carlings.
1727. P. Walker, Semple, Biog. Presbyt. (1827), I. 162. I have beheaded your Duke like a Sybow.
1818. Scott, Old Mort., xxxii. The head’s ta’en aff them, as clean as I wad bite it aff a sybo.
1819. W. Tennant, Papistry Storm’d (1827), 39. Sebows and leeks.
attrib. 1752. Records of Elgin (New Spald. Cl., 1903), I. 462. Ilk firkin of onions or sybowheads 9d.
1786. Burns, Ep. to M‘Adam, v. A lee dyke-side, a sybow-tail, And barley-scone, shall cheer me.
