cobble
1 Americanverb (used with object)
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to mend (shoes, boots, etc.); patch.
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to put together roughly or clumsily.
noun
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a cobblestone.
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cobbles, coal in lumps larger than a pebble and smaller than a boulder.
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Metalworking.
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a defect in a rolled piece resulting from loss of control over its movement.
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Slang. a piece showing bad workmanship.
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verb (used with object)
noun
noun
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short for cobblestone
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geology a rock fragment, often rounded, with a diameter of 64–256 mm and thus smaller than a boulder but larger than a pebble
verb
verb
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to make or mend (shoes)
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to put together clumsily
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of cobble1
First recorded in 1490–1500; apparently back formation from cobbler
Origin of cobble2
First recorded in 1595–1605; of uncertain origin; perhaps cob + -le; see cobblestone
Origin of cobble3
First recorded in 1885–95; perhaps from cobble 2
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:
Earlier this year, Main Street Sports Group alerted the NBA, National Hockey League and Major League Baseball that it would cease operations, leaving teams scrambling to cobble together TV coverage for their games.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 21, 2026
Other children at the shelter kick a ball around while their parents make use of food donations to cobble together meals for their little ones.
From Barron's ● Aug. 14, 2026
Small Business Administration; seek funds raised from specialized investors; or cobble together money from friends, family offices, private-equity funds and SBA-licensed small-business investment companies.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026
But if you’re doing it on your own, you can cobble together all of this information and put it in a spreadsheet.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 29, 2026
I was growing tired of spending time and money trying to cobble together a wardrobe that satisfied my aesthetic and my religious beliefs.
From "Proud" by Ibtihaj Muhammad
At night, the narrow cobbled streets of Old Havana are enveloped in inky black, devoid of power and virtually deserted.
From Barron's ● Aug. 18, 2026
You can still find vestiges of that past in the cobbled alleyways lined with pastel townhouses once owned by sea captains.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026
Needing new material for their 1981 tour, the Stones cobbled together “Tattoo You” from leftovers and half-finished songs dating back to “Goats Head Soup.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 10, 2026
The film is also a deceptively heartwarming ode to self-expression, and the kind of life that can be cobbled together with an unyielding commitment to individuality.
From Salon ● Mar. 27, 2026
He was walking up a cobbled street of little two-story houses with battered doorways which gave straight on the pavement and which were somehow curiously suggestive of rat holes.
From "1984" by George Orwell
"I'm interested in cobbling stuff together out of bits of junk and my scale has been increasing recently so things have been getting bigger," he said.
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
Their company has been prolific at cobbling together oil-rich acreage and flipping it to other energy producers in multibillion-dollar deals.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 10, 2026
Belgium's complex political system means that De Wever is well versed in the art of painstaking negotiations and cobbling together compromise deals.
From Barron's ● Dec. 17, 2025
It was essentially cobbling together a Frankenstein résumé from leftover pieces of information harvested from my search history, and passing it off as my own work experience.
From Slate ● Oct. 6, 2025
So he did his first experiment at the University of Utah by cobbling together about $30 in parts.
From "A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age" by Matt Richtel
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.
