I've run across a word not listed in my dictionary used with two apparent definitions.
Nubbin-a small rockoutcropping approximate to a fingerwidth.
Nubbin-someone lacking in IQ
anyone come across this?
perhaps it's time for a better dictionary?
nubbin started out with the sense of a small stunted ear of corn or piece of fruit, broadened to the sense of stub or stump, and I suppose has been applied (in the sense of stunted, underdeveloped or imperfect) to someone's mental capacity.
Dear Paul ~
Don't let tsuwm's curt answer -- "buy a better dictionary" -- put you off. He gets that way from time to time, having to do with the lunar cycle, I suspect.
My Chambers Dictionary (from the Mother Country) does not include this word ... and I do not intend to replace it.
Lots of folks on this board use on-line dictionaries for those cases where deep etymology is not needed. Somewhere on the board there is a list of their URL's but I can't now recall where. Perhaps one of the others will have it at hand.
Welcome to the feast!
Father Steve
[quote]My Chambers Dictionary (from the Mother Country) does not include this word .../quote]
Interesting. My Chambers does have "nubbin": "(US)n. A small or undedeveloped ear of corn, fruit etc."
Paul, here are a few useful URLs:
http://www.dictionary.comhttp://www.m-w.comhttp://www.onelook.comhttp://www.thesaurus.com And, of course, you should also check out tsuwm's page -
http://members.aol.com/tsuwm/as well, his wwftd is well worth subscribing to -it's interesting how often discussions here will surface in his mailing list.
Max says: "My Chambers does have "nubbin": "(US)n. A small or undedeveloped ear of corn, fruit etc."
And the Vicar responds: My best quess is that Max has either "The Chambers Dictionary" or "Chambers Encyclopedic English Dictionary" while the humble (and poor) vicar has only "Chambers Pocket Dictionary" (Edinburgh, 1992). This is because, when I wondered aloud to one of my classes what it would be like to have an English English dictionary, one of my students -- a short, wily Scotsman -- smuggled one back from a trip to his homeland, in his luggage, without payment of the appropriate duty.
Doubtless the "Pocket" (read: more easily smuggled) version has fewer words (at 60,000) than the larger, more expensive and harder to conceal editions.
well, since someone brought up the 'Mother Country', here is what the OED has to say about nubbin:
[f. nub n.1]
A dwarfed or imperfect ear of maize. Also transf. and fig., esp. something small or something that remains when the main part is worn away.
...and a citation or two:
1692 in Maryland Hist. Mag. (1918) XIII. 209 Jones saw him buy one beaver skin...for thirty ears and nubbins of corn. 1954 Dylan Thomas Quite Early One Morning i. 56 The Telecinema... blobs and nubbins and rubbery squirls receding.