Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A negligible amount.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To dribble; drivel.
  • noun A drop; a driblet, or small quantity.
  • 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.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • verb (Archery), obsolete To shoot (a shaft) so as to pierce on the descent.
  • transitive verb To cut off by a little at a time; to crop.
  • transitive verb To appropriate unlawfully; to filch; to defalcate.
  • transitive verb To lead along step by step; to entice.
  • noun obsolete A drop.
  • noun a small portion or small amount of anything; -- used mostly in the phrase dribs and drabs.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun obsolete A drop.
  • verb transitive To cut off; chop off.
  • verb transitive To cut off little by little; cheat by small and reiterated tricks; purloin.
  • verb transitive To entice step by step.
  • verb transitive, archery To shoot directly at short range.
  • verb intransitive, archery To shoot at a mark at short range.
  • verb transitive To beat; thrash; drub.
  • verb transitive To scold.
  • verb transitive To strike another player's marble when playing from the trigger.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a small indefinite quantity (especially of a liquid)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Perhaps from driblet.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From a variant of drip.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From English dialectal drib (compare also drub), a variant from Middle English drepen ("to hit, strike, slay"), from Old English drepan ("to strike, kill, overcome"), from Proto-Germanic *drepanan (“to hit, strike”). More at drub.

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