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drub.

Carbonaceous shale; small coal; slate, dross, or rubbish in coal.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/dɹʌb//dɹʊb/Ireland, Northern-England
  1. Carbonaceous shale; small coal; slate, dross, or rubbish in coal.

    Northern-England · dialectal · uncountable · usually
Where this word comes from

From Middle English *drob, drof, from Old English *drōb, drōf (“turbid; dreggy; dirty”), from Proto-West Germanic *drōbī, from Proto-Germanic *drōbuz (“turbid”).

verb/dɹʌb//dɹʊb/Ireland, Northern-England
  1. To beat (someone or something) with a stick.

    transitive
  2. To defeat someone soundly; to annihilate or crush.

    transitive
  3. To forcefully teach something.

    transitive
  4. To criticize harshly; to excoriate.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

1625, of uncertain origin: * Perhaps from Arabic ضَرَبَ (ḍaraba, “to beat, hit”), * or perhaps originally from a dialectal word (Kent) drab, variant of drop, dryp, drib (“to beat”), from Middle English drepen (preterit drop, drap, drape (“struck, killed”)) from Old English drepan (“to strike”), from Proto-West Germanic *drepan, from Proto-Germanic *drepaną (“to beat, bump, strike, slay”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰreb⁽ʰ⁾- (“to strike, crush, kill”). * Linguist Guus Kroonen suggests that it reflects the Proto-Germanic verb *drubbōną, iterative to *drabaną (“to hit, hew”), as found in Norwegian drubbe, drubba (“to hit hard, strike with force, kill”). Compare also Old Frisian drop (“a blow, beat”), Old High German treffan (“to hit, strike”), Old Norse drepa (“to strike, slay, kill”), Swedish drabba (“to hit, strike”). Compare also dub. More at drape.

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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.