overwordExplorer
ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

dob.

To report a person to someone in authority for a wrongdoing. (For transitive forms see dob in, dob on.)

3 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/dɑb/General-American/dɒb/Received-Pronunciation
  1. To report a person to someone in authority for a wrongdoing. (For transitive forms see dob in, dob on.)

    Australia · New-Zealand · intransitive · slang
  2. To play truant.

    Northern-Ireland · ambitransitive · slang
Where this word comes from

Uncertain. Possibly from Middle English dobben.

noun/dɑb/General-American/dɒb/Received-Pronunciation
  1. A small amount of something, especially paste.

    Put a dob of butter on the potato, please.
Where this word comes from

Probably variation of dab.

verb/dɑb/General-American/dɒb/Received-Pronunciation
  1. In the scouting movement, to chant dob to indicate that one will do one's best to follow the scouting laws.

    humorous · intransitive · sometimes
Where this word comes from

Short for do our best. dyb (or dib) and dob were used as abbreviated forms of do your best and do our best in certain Scout chants.

noun/dɑb/General-American/dɒb/Received-Pronunciation
  1. Initialism of date of birth.

    abbreviation · alt-of · initialism
Where this word comes from

Initialism.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.