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  • cob
    cob
    noun
    a corncob.
  • COB
    COB
    abbreviation
    close of business.
Synonyms

cob

1 American  
[kob] / kɒb /

noun

  1. a corncob.

  2. a male swan.

  3. a short-legged, thick-set horse, often having a high gait and frequently used for driving.

  4. British. a mixture of clay and straw, used as a building material.

  5. British Dialect. a rounded mass or lump.

  6. a crude silver or gold Spanish-American coin of the 16th to 18th centuries, characteristically irregular in shape and bearing only a partial impression of the dies from which it was struck.

COB 2 American  

abbreviation

Business.

  1. close of business.

    The data analysis will be on your desk by COB Wednesday.
cob 1 British  
/ kɒb /

noun

  1. a male swan

  2. a thickset short-legged type of riding and draught horse

  3. short for corncob corncob pipe cobnut

  4. another name for hazel

  5. a small rounded lump or heap of coal, ore, etc

  6. a building material consisting of a mixture of clay and chopped straw

  7. Also called: cob loaf.  a round loaf of bread

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

verb

  1. informal (tr) to beat, esp on the buttocks

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
cob 2 British  
/ kɒb /

noun

  1. an archaic or dialect name for the greater black-backed gull ( Larus marinus ) See also gull 1

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of cob

First recorded in 1375–1425; late Middle English cobbe “male swan, leader of a gang”; these and various subsequent senses are obscurely related and probably in part of distinct origin

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

“I needed to know specific details about proper hot-pepper husbandry,” says Caruso, who lives in Cos Cob, Conn. “She would come back with everything I needed.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 5, 2026

Cob County, as the name suggests, is corn crazy.

From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 22, 2025

The story is after all set in the fictional Cob County, where the locals, long isolated from the rest of the world by a wall of “cornrows,” live in the perfect “hominy” of entrenched dopiness.

From New York Times • Apr. 4, 2023

Surely it must have been one of those fake Twitter accounts that crop up at times like this, authored by someone named Cob Bondotta.

From Seattle Times • Mar. 14, 2023

Cob finally managed to free himself from Jake.

From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.