Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A negligible amount: finished the work in dribs and drabs.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To cut off; chop off. Dekker. Specifically
- To cut off little by little; cheat by small and reiterated tricks; purloin.
- To entice step by step.
- In archery, to shoot directly at short range.
- In archery, to shoot at a mark at short range.
- To dribble; drivel.
- n. A drop; a driblet, or small quantity.
Wiktionary
- v. transitive To cut off; chop off.
- v. transitive To cut off little by little; cheat by small and reiterated tricks; purloin.
- v. transitive To entice step by step.
- v. transitive, archery To shoot directly at short range.
- v. intransitive, archery To shoot at a mark at short range.
- v. transitive To beat; thrash; drub.
- v. transitive To scold.
- v. transitive To strike another player's marble when playing from the trigger.
- n. obsolete A drop.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To cut off by a little at a time; to crop.
- v. To appropriate unlawfully; to filch; to defalcate.
- v. To lead along step by step; to entice.
- v. (Archery), obsolete To shoot (a shaft) so as to pierce on the descent.
- n. obsolete A drop.
- n. a small portion or small amount of anything; -- used mostly in the phrase
dribs and drabs .
WordNet 3.0
- n. a small indefinite quantity (especially of a liquid)
Etymologies
- From a variant of drip. (Wiktionary)
- Perhaps from driblet. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“In this brief list, we can see an assortment of them, from straight carryovers (leader, ski-pass), to literal translations (figli dei fiori, grattacieli), to partial translations where an Italian suffix is tacked on to an English stem (such as drib-blaggio or zoomare).”
“Coulter displays her special genius again with a well leaked drib from her new liberal bash book Guilty about Michelle Obama.”
“Aifinkso him is still lurning tu drib teh hamsur bawls.”
Sure, ai have a - Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger?
“Back with us in just a little bit as these details start to drib in and drab out.”
“A little drib of news about the forthcoming Haunted Mansion movie:”
“BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Your drib and drab correspondent here.”
“O'BRIEN: And we are getting a drib and drab of information in advance of all of this.”
“When I stay dere wid Miss Leggett, I hadder pick up little chip 'bout de yard when I fust come home from school en den I hadder go 'way up in de big field en drib de turkeys up.”
“But as near as we can figure, it 's too much of a drib-drab proposition for that.”
“For my idle hours there was the 'Complete Mathematician,' showing how to figger the most difficult problems easily, how to measure corn in the drib, water in the well, figger interest, et cetery, by which I become posted on all kinds of arithmetic.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘drib’.
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Imprecise Units of Measurement
A list of terms for units of measurement that are less than exact, such as dessert-spoonful.
two shakes, dessert-spoonful, a pinch, a bit, some, smidge, smidgin, dollop, drop, fleck, smack, sprinkling and 187 more...
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-ib
zib, glib, fib, squib, lib, nib, bib, dib, mib, gib, jib, Carib and 27 more...
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DYSLEXIC'S DREAD
Words That Make Sense in Reverse Too! Bad news for a dyslexic, 'cause s/he's got no clue if s/he read the word correctly or not, as opposed to a palindrome (i.e., no mistake possible, cf. "Dyslexic...
tool, lever, nap, pool, leer, leek, desserts, strop, doom, ukiah, yaws, ward and 213 more...
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splat
splat, blob, blorp, slop, spatter, spit, blip, blat, splatter, blot, drip, drib and 15 more...
Tweets
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