Log in or Sign up
  1. hobnob love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. v. To associate familiarly: hobnobs with the executives.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. Take or not take: a familiar invitation to drinking.
  2. At random; come what will.
  3. Also written hob-a-nob, hob-and-nob, hob-or-nob.
  4. To drink together; hence, to talk familiarly or socially. Also hob-a-nob, hob-and-nob, hob-or-nob.

Wiktionary

  1. n. An informal chat.
  2. v. To associate in a friendly manner, often with those of a higher class or status.
  3. v. To drink together.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adv. Have or have not; -- a familiar invitation to reciprocal drinking.
  2. adv. At random; hit or miss. (Obs.)
  3. v. To drink familiarly (with another).
  4. v. To associate familiarly; to be on intimate terms.
  5. n. Familiar, social intercourse.

WordNet 3.0

  1. v. rub elbows with

Etymologies

  1. (1595–1605) From Old English habban ("have") and nabban ("not have"), thus “have or have not”. (Wiktionary)
  2. From the phrase (drink) hob or nob, (toast) one another alternately, from obsolete and dialectal hab nab, have or have not : probably Middle English habbe, have; see have + Middle English nabbe (contraction of ne habbe, have not : Old English ne, not; see not + habbe, have). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

Show 10 more examples...

Log in or sign up to add your own related words.

synonyms (2)

Words with the same meaning

  1. drink
  1. associate

hypernyms (2)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. socialise
  1. socialize

reverse dictionary (2)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. hobanob
  1. hobornob

tags (5)

Free-form, user-generated categorization

  1. reduplicative
  1. old english origin
  1. hob-a-nob
  1. hob-and-nob
  1. hob-or-nob

Log in or sign up to add your own tag.

Wordmap

(beta)

Word visualization

Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘hobnob’.

More lists containing ‘hobnob’

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • crunchysaviour Disagree.

    Strongly. Aug 24, 2008

  • bilby Overrated. Aug 21, 2008

  • crunchysaviour Also a delicious biscuit; an especially delicious biscuit, come to that, and, dare I say it, King of biscuits. Aug 21, 2008

  • muamor "Hobnobbing with our social betters can be a hit-or-miss proposition, a fact that has an etymological justification. The verb hobnob originally meant “to drink together�? and occurred as a varying phrase, hob or nob, hob-a-nob, or hob and nob, the first of which is recorded in 1763. This phrasal form reflects the origins of the verb in similar phrases that were used when two people toasted each other. The phrases were probably so used because hob is a variant of hab and nob of nab, which are probably forms of have and its negative. In Middle English, for example, one finds the forms habbe, “to have,�? and nabbe, “not to have.�? Hab or nab, or simply hab nab, thus meant “get or lose, hit or miss,�? and the variant hob-nob also meant “hit or miss.�? Used in the drinking phrase, hob or nob probably meant “give or take�?; from a drinking situation hob nob spread to other forms of chumminess."

    http://www.answers.com/topic/hobnob Mar 7, 2008

  • cosmican socialize Dec 23, 2007

Tweets

Looking for tweets for hobnob.

‘hobnob’ has been looked up 1959 times, loved by 4 people, added to 54 lists, commented on 5 times, and has a Scrabble score of 13.