Definitions

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

  • intransitive verb To hit, throw, or propel in a high arc.
  • intransitive verb To hit a ball in a high arc.
  • intransitive verb To move heavily or clumsily.
  • noun A ball hit, thrown, or propelled in a high arc.
  • noun Slang A clumsy dull person; a lout.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In milling, to break (ore, etc.) into pieces with a hammer for sorting.
  • To hang down; drop or droop.
  • To hang wearily or languidly; allow to drop or droop.
  • noun A dull, sluggish person; a lout.
  • noun The last person in a race.
  • noun Something thick and lumpish; a lump.
  • noun A thick, soft mixture. See the quotation, and compare loblolly.
  • noun A lobworm.
  • noun The pollack.
  • noun The coalfish.
  • noun [⟨ lob, verb] In cricket, a low slow ball.
  • noun In lawn-tennis, a play by which one of the contestants knocks the ball over the head of his opponent into the back part of the court.
  • noun Lob Lie-by-the-fire—the Lubber-flend, as Milton calls him—is a rough kind of Brownie or House Elf, supposed to haunt some north-country homesteads, where he does the work of the farm-labourers, for no grander wages than “—to earn his cream-bowl duly set.”
  • To throw (a lump or ball, etc.); toss gently or with a slow movement; specifically, in lawn-tennis, to strike (the ball) over the head of one's opponent into the back part of the court.
  • To kick.
  • To be tossed with a slow movement, as a cricket-ball or a shot.

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

  • noun A dull, heavy person.
  • noun Something thick and heavy.
  • transitive verb To let fall heavily or lazily.
  • transitive verb to propel (relatively slowly) in a high arcing trajectory.
  • transitive verb (Lawn Tennis) to strike a ball so as to send it up into the air.
  • noun The act of lobbing
  • transitive verb (Mining) See cob, v. t.
  • noun (Zoöl.) The European pollock.

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

  • noun A fish, the European pollock.
  • noun a lump
  • noun obsolete a country bumpkin, clown
  • verb To throw or hit a ball into the air in a high arch.
  • verb colloquial To throw.
  • verb colloquial To put, place
  • verb sports To hit, kick, or throw a ball over another player in a game.
  • noun A pass or stroke which arches high into the air.

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

  • noun an easy return of a tennis ball in a high arc
  • noun the act of propelling something (as a ball or shell etc.) in a high arc
  • verb propel in a high arc

Etymologies

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

[Originally, to act like a lout, hang heavily, move clumsily, from lob, lout, something heavy and pendulous, lump, from Middle English lob, pollack, lout; akin to Middle Low German and Middle Dutch lobbe, lubbe, hanging lip, probably ultimately of imitative origin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Danish lubbe.

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Examples

Comments

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  • lolly

    June 26, 2008

  • "10. Lob Lie-by-the-fire—the Lubber-flend, as Milton calls him—is a rough kind of Brownie or House Elf, supposed to haunt some north-country homesteads, where he does the work of the farm-labourers, for no grander wages than “—to earn his cream-bowl duly set.”"

    --Century Dictionary

    March 23, 2011

  • One of my favorite scientific papers that I read while in graduate school was on the estimation of trunk volume of loblolly pines based only on serial measurements of tree circumference. An important topic if you care about forestry inventory management, apparently.

    Or if you are a woodworm.

    Mmmm. Loblolly pines.

    March 23, 2011