Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An uproar; a hubbub.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A continued bubbling or gurgling sound.
- noun A primitive form of pipe for smoking, popular among the lower classes in India.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A tobacco pipe, so arranged that the smoke passes through water, making a bubbling noise, whence its name. In India, the bulb containing the water is often a cocoanut shell. It is a simple type of
hookah .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun a
hookah
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun an oriental tobacco pipe with a long flexible tube connected to a container where the smoke is cooled by passing through water
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Listening to the harsh, monotonous screeching of the cart, he puffs happily at his mud-stained hubble-bubble, lost in broken and distorted memories of the past.
What Sri Aurobindo wrote about community presages The Mother’s Auroville Charter Tusar N Mohapatra 2007
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Pleasantly weary, he stretched out on a rope bed, eavesdropping on his father's guests and supplicants -- smoky, piratical gatherings in the hujera's great room, with hubble-bubble hookahs and high-caliber bandoleers, lulling him to sleep with the streamside murmur of their mutter and growl, and the whine and hum of their radio, beaming news from the great beyond.
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Inevitably one made up things like that about Hugh; that was his style; the style of those admirable letters which Peter had read thousands of miles across the sea in the Times, and had thanked God he was out of that pernicious hubble-bubble if it were only to hear baboons chatter and coolies beat their wives.
Mrs. Dalloway 2003
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Already in that early day it was his habit to smoke in bed, and he had made him an Oriental pipe of the hubble-bubble variety, because it would hold more and was more comfortable than the regular short pipe of daytime use.
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Tasslehoff closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see the gnome, but he saw him anyway-his nut-brown face and his wispy hair that floated about his head as though he were perpetually poking his finger into one of his own inventions, perhaps the steam-powered preambulating hubble-bubble or the locomotive, self-winding rutabaga slicer.
Dragons Of A Vanished Moon Weis, Margaret 2002
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Tasslehoff closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see the gnome, but he saw him anyway-his nut-brown face and his wispy hair that floated about his head as though he were perpetually poking his finger into one of his own inventions, perhaps the steam-powered preambulating hubble-bubble or the locomotive, self-winding rutabaga slicer.
Dragons of a Vanished Moon Weis, Margaret 2002
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"Sindbad the Sailor, a Joe Meek mountain-man type, one moribund hash aficionado complete with hubble-bubble, and a classic British birdwatcher," Pitkin rattled off in snap appraisal.
The Golden Torc May, Julian, 1931- 1981
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Alas, no! She entertains a set of lazy bearers, smoking the hubble-bubble around a palanquin as they wait for a fare; and her buksheesh may be a cowry or two.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 03, January, 1858 Various
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"Ah, ah," said the Chinaman, placing a hubble-bubble before his guest, who condescended to shut the mouthpiece in under his long moustache, while he sat silently for nearly half an hour.
The Pointing Man A Burmese Mystery Marjorie Douie
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All smoke, using sometimes this long-stemmed, small-bowled pipe, and sometimes the water pipe, akin in principle to the Indian hubble-bubble.
A Wayfarer in China Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia Elizabeth Kimball Kendall
chained_bear commented on the word hubble-bubble
"Captain Aubrey found Stephen and Dr. Jacob sitting on the Crown's veranda, smoking a hubble-bubble."
--Patrick O'Brian, Blue at the Mizzen, 25
March 27, 2008