subs. (old, now colloquial).—A growing gawk: as in the folk-rhyme, ‘Hobbledehoy, neither man nor boy.’ [For derivation, see Notes and Queries, 1 S., v., 468, vii., 572; 4 S., ii., 297, viii., 451, ix., 147; 7 S., iv., 523, and v., 58.]
1557. TUSSER, Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie, ch. 60, st. 3, p. 138 (E.D.S.).
| The first seuen yeers bring vp as a childe, | |
| The next to learning, for waxing too wilde. | |
| The next keepe vnder sir HOBBARD DE HOY, | |
| The next a man no longer a boy. |
1738. SWIFT, Polite Conversation, Dial. 1. Why, he is a mere HOBBLEDEHOY, neither a man nor a boy.
1785. GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v.
1837. R. H. BARHAM, The Ingoldsby Legends (Aunt Fanny).
| At the epoch I speak about, I was between | |
| A man and a boy, | |
| A HOBBLE-DE-HOY, | |
| A fat, little, punchy concern of sixteen. |
1848. THACKERAY, Vanity Fair, ch. iv. He remembered perfectly well being thrashed by Joseph Sedley, when the latter was a big, swaggering, HOBBADYHOY, and George an impudent urchin of ten years old.
Hence HOBBLEDEHOYISH and HOBBLEDEHOYHOOD.
1812. COLMAN, Poetical Vagaries, 12.
| When Master Daw full fourteen years had told, | |
| He grew, as it is term’d, HOBBEDYHOY-ISH; | |
| For Cupidons, and Fairies, much too old, | |
| For Calibans, and Devils, much too boyish. |
1839. THACKERAY, The Fatal Boots (April). From boyhood until HOBBADYHOYHOOD (which I take to be about the sixteenth year of the life of a young man).
1848. THACKERAY, The Book of Snobs, ch. xlii. A half-grown, or HOBBADEHOYISH footman, so to speak, walked after them.
