Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Nautical A small flatbottom fishing boat with a lugsail on a raking mast.
- n. Scots A kind of flatbottom rowboat.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A flattish-bottomed, clincher-built fishing-boat with a square stern.
Wiktionary
- n. nautical small flat-bottomed fishing boat suitable for launching from a beach, found on the north-east coast of England and in Scotland.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A flat-floored fishing boat with a lug sail, and a drop rudder extending from two to four feet below the keel. It was originally used on the stormy coast of Yorkshire, England.
Etymologies
- From Middle English coble, from Welsh ceubal ("skiff") (Wiktionary)
- Middle English cobel, perhaps ultimately from Latin caupulus, a kind of small ship. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Looking to eastward you saw a dark semicircular streak on the water, and inside this streak a coble glided slowly hither and thither.”
“Thus, after years of experiment, the "coble" was designed in its present form; and these craft are as much the product of their special locality as are the men who man them.”
“Thou killest the fish with spear, line, and coble-net; and we, with snares and with nets, which work by the ebb and the flow of the tide.”
“Willy Dring, Joe Robinson, Neddy Smith and Tom Watson—the four young, strong, unattached, sea-mad men—were to man the coble to fish whenever possible.”
“The only trouble was that the fish were capricious; on some days the coble would come in with a hundred, on other days with none.”
“The coble got out today and Johnny is dancing attendance on Captain Hunter, so I have his share too.”
“The coble, so called because it was clinker-built in the manner of a Scotch fishing dinghy, very flat-bottomed, glided across the reef without grazing itself and stroked the mere 150 yards across the lagoon to the straight beach, where some of the surviving members of the community stood waiting: six women, one—the oldest—big with child, and five men whose ages, if their faces reflected their years, varied between shaveling young and grizzled old.”
“He really does have good manners, thought Richard as he strode alongside the Commandant down the pathway which led from the sawpit to Government House and the storage sheds, one of which, he noted, held the coble and an even smaller boat made from the pieces of the old coble which had foundered on the reef and drowned four men.”
“They were to man the fishing coble at Norfolk Island.”
“Unable to make contact with the first of the two sighted ships, Lieutenant Clark in the coble headed for the second one and managed to board her.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘coble’.
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nouns
enfleurage, fautor, mafia, haslet, chopine, sea-gate, cantillation, formicary, go-devil, Gongorism, mamzer, mazarine and 147 more...
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Out to Sea
If I had a boat
I'd go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I'd ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat.boat, ship, skiff, barge, canoe, catamaran, yacht, scow, lifeboat, launch, ketch, dory and 303 more...
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Professional Scrabble Lexicon (TWL)
A myriad of game-changing words every Scrabble addict must have in his arsenal.
Keep in mind that these are all tried-and-true feasibly playable words selected for their handiness, i.e...paragon, pignora, ganef, suttee, origan, ohia, aioli, abasement, lehr, mho, tallow, harelike and 848 more...
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-bles
fine find endings
able, amble, bable, cable, cible, coble, dable, fable, gable, gible, tible, table and 241 more...
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annoying little words used against me...
yirr, defi, recce, bindi, ose, ani, eng, sloid, orle, voe, aine, ansa and 23 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for coble.
rolig A flat-bottomed fishing boat with a lugsail, used mainly in northern England and Scotland for salmon. (Dictionary.com Unabridged) Jun 3, 2008