cab
noun
a taxicab.
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cab
1 American
[kab]
/ kæb /
noun
-
a taxicab.
-
any of various horse-drawn vehicles, as a hansom or brougham, especially one for public hire.
-
the covered or enclosed part of a locomotive, truck, crane, etc., where the operator sits.
-
the glass-enclosed area of an airport control tower in which the controllers are stationed.
verb (used without object)
cabbed,
cabbing
cab
2
American
[kab]
/ kæb /
Or
kab
noun
cab
3
American
[kab]
/ kæb /
noun
Chiefly British.
CAB
4
American
Or
C.A.B.
cab
1
British
/ kæb /
noun
-
-
a taxi
-
( as modifier )
a cab rank
-
-
the enclosed compartment of a lorry, locomotive, crane, etc, from which it is driven or operated
-
(formerly) a light horse-drawn vehicle used for public hire
-
informal the first person, etc, to do or take advantage of something
CAB
2
British
abbreviation
-
(in Britain) Citizens' Advice Bureau
-
(in the US) Civil Aeronautics Board
cab
3
British
/ kæb /
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:
Mangione fled uptown on an electric bicycle, then jumped into a cab that took him to the George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
Firefighters worked for nearly two hours to extricate the driver, using hydraulic tools to cut into the trapped flatbed’s cab.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 31, 2026
Consider when Gail and Otto arrive in Hollywood and hop in a cab driven by Richard Kind.
From Salon ● Jul. 12, 2026
A cab took him over the Queensboro Bridge, but he hit traffic.
From Slate ● Jul. 7, 2026
We took a cab to Bonetti Ranch, where we were welcomed by a torrential downpour and a pack of bony stray dogs.
From "Breaking Through" by Francisco Jiménez
"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
Nucera's IPO is part of a wave of European companies aiming to go public before investors shut up shop for the summer, including Hidroelectrica in Romania and CAB Payments in Britain.
From Reuters ● Jul. 5, 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
“I know it’s something about squares, and ABC, and BAC, and CAB, and—but you produce the lines.”
From Quicksilver The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel by Frank Dadd
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
To the unprejudiced observer Melbourne is the worst cabbed city in the world, or amongst the worst.
From Recollections With Photogravure Portrait of the Author and a number of Original Letters, of which one by George Meredith and another by Robert Louis Stevenson are reproduced in facsimile by David Christie Murray
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
"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
I went on cabbing it for a day or so, intending to keep at it until I could save enough to take me back to America.
From A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
And then I’ll tell you I’m tired of this cabbing cruise, and I want to get to work again.
From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) by Robert Louis Stevenson
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.
