cab
1 Americannoun
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a taxicab.
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any of various horse-drawn vehicles, as a hansom or brougham, especially one for public hire.
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the covered or enclosed part of a locomotive, truck, crane, etc., where the operator sits.
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the glass-enclosed area of an airport control tower in which the controllers are stationed.
verb (used without object)
noun
noun
noun
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a taxi
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( as modifier )
a cab rank
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the enclosed compartment of a lorry, locomotive, crane, etc, from which it is driven or operated
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(formerly) a light horse-drawn vehicle used for public hire
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informal the first person, etc, to do or take advantage of something
abbreviation
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(in Britain) Citizens' Advice Bureau
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(in the US) Civil Aeronautics Board
noun
Etymology
Origin of cab1
First recorded in 1640–50; short for cabriolet
Origin of cab2
First recorded in 1525–35; from Hebrew qabh
Explanation
A cab is a taxi, a car whose driver you pay to take you where you need to go. It can feel like a competitive sport to hail a cab in New York City. Your cab driver may talk incessantly while she drives you to the airport, or you might ride in a cab that's silent except for the sound of its horn honking at other drivers. You can also call the front part of a truck, where the driver sits, the cab. In the 1820s, the word meant "horse-drawn carriage," short for the French cabriolet, "leap or caper." The Latin root is capreolus, "wild goat."
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.
See Examples For:
She leaves the place—New York’s Tavern on the Green, in Central Park—and gets into a cab, kicking off the film’s opening credits.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 3, 2026
And Skyroot's cab service could also cater to Isro's space programmes, but Chandana says that "70-80% of our market would be the global economy".
From BBC ● Jul. 18, 2026
Consider when Gail and Otto arrive in Hollywood and hop in a cab driven by Richard Kind.
From Salon ● Jul. 12, 2026
He echoed the story he’d told the FBI—that he’d learned of the bombing from someone at his apartment—but then said he’d heard about it during a cab ride.
From Slate ● Jul. 7, 2026
The subway was shut down, so we stalked the street, searching for an available cab.
From "City of the Plague God" by Sarwat Chadda
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"I'm going to give it my all until the end of the season to finish this adventure with CAB in the best possible way."
From BBC ● Apr. 6, 2026
"We found an unexpected chemical complexity, with abundances far higher than predicted by current theoretical models," explains lead author Dr. Ismael García Bernete formerly of Oxford University and now a researcher at CAB.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 12, 2026
Britain's CAB Payments has taken the rare step of setting a fixed price for its share offering that values it at the lower end of its previously reported range.
From Reuters ● Jun. 30, 2023
When Johnson’s private plane crashed in Texas that year, killing the two people who were on board, Mr. Boyd began investigating the crash for the CAB.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 19, 2020
Thus ∠A is read "BAC," the reflex angle on the outside of the triangle being read "CAB."
From The Teaching of Geometry by David Eugene Smith
Refusing to give up, Foster had a board mix put together of the first performance and cabbed it to the radio station.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 12, 2015
Their daughter told them she "cabbed it" but they say they do not know how she actually traveled cross-country or where she has been staying.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 26, 2013
On Thursday night, I cabbed it to my goddaughter’s house in Fort Greene.
From Slate ● Nov. 12, 2012
It’s like a slower, 1950s version of the real city across that cool bridge we cabbed over last night.
From "Better Nate Than Ever" by Tim Federle
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He cabbed it away from Luzatti's, and I cabbed it after him.
From Martin Hewitt, Investigator by Arthur Morrison
The day before E3 officially kicks off this year, I’ll be liveblogging the Ubisoft press conference, then cabbing it over to the L.A.
From Forbes ● Jun. 2, 2014
Max is a dreamer; a lonely man whose ideal of running a limo service is still unrealised after 12 years of "temporary" cabbing.
From Time Magazine Archive
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"We seem destined to consort with the cabbing trade," I remarked; "the last office was over a mews, this place seems to belong to a carriage-builder."
From A Girl Among the Anarchists by Isabel Meredith
His sixteen "outsides" bestow upon me a supercilious look that conveys to me that they opine I am merely cabbing it to the station en route for a "suburban hop."
From The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 2 by Harry Furniss
To be sure, vettura driving is not like cabbing, and Gaetano was in the habit of getting out often and walking up the hills, thus exercising his liver.
From Hawthorne and His Circle by Julian Hawthorne
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.