[f. TUB v. (or sb.) + -ING1.] The action of TUB v.
1. a. † Treatment in the sweating-tub: see TUB sb. 1 b. b. Washing or bathing in a tub or bath.
1657. G. Starkey, Nature’s Explic., To Rdr. 9. Salivation in the Lues or Tubbing is a dotage.
1845. Hood, Black Job, xiii. In spite of all the tubbing, rubbing, scrubbing … The blacks … were as black as ever!
1894. Boase, Exeter Coll. (O.H.S.), p. clxii. The quite modern institution of tubbing in the mornings.
2. The lining of a pit-shaft or tunnel with a watertight casing: see TUB v. 2; concr. the casing of timber, masonry, or metal sections used for this.
1839. Ure, Dict. Arts, 969. The pit … must … be sunk through the quicksand by means of tubbing.
1851. Greenwell, Coal-trade Terms Northumb. & Durh., 55. At present, tubbing is put in in metal segments.
1855. Orr’s Circ. Sc., Inorg. Nat., 237. There are several kinds of stopping out water, or tubbing, as it is called…. Stone tubbing,… Plank tubbing,… Solid wood tubbing,… and Metal tubbing.
1862. Smiles, Engineers, III. 297. The skilful casing of the shaft with segments of cast-iron—a process called ‘tubbing.’
b. attrib., as tubbing-deal, -plate, -wedge.
1839. Ure, Dict. Arts, 973. The tubbing deals … must now be fixed.
1883. Gresley, Gloss. Terms Coal Mining, Tubbing plates, cast-iron segments forming portion of a ring of tubbing…. Tubbing wedges, small wooden wedges of pitch pine … hammered in between the joints of tubbing plates…, thus stopping back every drop of water from the shaft.
1886. J. Barrowman, Sc. Mining Terms, 68. Tubbing-deals, deals put behind tubbing in a shaft.
3. Rowing in a ‘tub’; training for a boat-race in a ‘tub’: see TUB sb. 3, v. 4.
1884. Pall Mall G., 11 Jan., 10/2. Operations on the Cam commenced yesterday with ‘tubbing.’
1904. Daily News, 23 March, 11/2. The Dark Blues did some tubbing work first.
