[f. prec. sb.]
1. trans. To bathe or wash in a tub or bath. colloq.
1610. B. Jonson, Alch., IV. iii. In your bathada You shall be sok’d, and strok’d, and tub’d, and rub’d.
1883. G. H. Boughton, in Harper’s Mag., April, 700/1. She was ‘tubbing’ the two babies.
b. intr. To wash oneself in a tub or bath; to take a tub or bath, esp. on rising. colloq.
1867. Pall Mall G., No. 708. 1722/2. Gentlemen who didn’t tub of a morning.
1885. C. H. Eden, G. Donnington, ii. It was necessary … to tub and dress by the feeble flame of a single candle.
2. trans. To line (a pit-shaft) with a water-tight casing of timber, masonry, or iron; to dam back (water) in a shaft or tunnel in this way; to shut off (watery strata or seams) from the shaft with tubbing.
1812. J. Hodgson, in J. Raine, Mem. (1857), I. 94. The low-main coal is kept perfectly dry by tubbing the watery seams with a circular casing of oak wood.
1839. Ure, Dict. Arts, 972. When several fathoms of the strata must be tubbed, in order to stop up the water flow.
1862. Chamb. Jrnl., 5 April, 217/1. The shaft … is built round with brick at the top and bottom, while the rest of the way is ‘tubbed’ with long planks placed perpendicularly round the sides.
1865. Jevons, Coal-Question (1866), 68. When this flood of water … had been ‘tubbed back.’
1881. Sands, Sk. Tranent, i. 17. The Coal Company offered to ‘tub’ or line the faulty pit with iron plates.
1884. trans. Lotze’s Logic, viii. 359. Men who are tubbing a well with masonry.
3. To put or pack in a tub; to plant in a tub.
1828. T. Hook, Hum. Wks., Fashionable Parties (1873), 322. Drawing rooms at ninety-six, and half-a-score sickly orange-trees tubbed on the top of a staircase.
1889. Daily News, 29 June, 6/3. As soon as the grower finds it won’t pay him to send all his strawberries to market for table use, he begins to pick them and tub them, and sell them by the ton to the jam maker.
b. To soak (bricks) in a tub before setting or laying them.
1913. Daily News, 31 March, 6. The walls … were built in cement mortar and the bricks properly tubbed.
4. trans. and intr. To coach (oarsmen) in a ‘tub’; to practise rowing in a ‘tub’ (TUB sb. 3). Rowing slang.
1882. Society, 18 Nov., 7/2. ‘Tubbing’ vigorously, with the … intention of putting on a boat for the Lent races.
1883. in Standard, 17 Jan., 3/7. An hour and a half was then spent in tubbing the men.
1887. Daily News, 28 Jan., 3/6. Proceedings commenced … by Mr. Orde tubbing the [men] in the gig pair.
Hence Tubbed ppl. a.
1882. Sala, Amer. Revis. (1885), 250. Our pickled or ‘tubbed’ pork.
1890. J. Hatton, By Order of Czar, III. iii. A courtyard … gay with tubbed laurel and tented tables.
