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:
LSU gained 644 yards—more than quadrupling the offense Clemson could cobble together.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 6, 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
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
Most parents lose sleep over the amount of piecemeal work required to cobble together a summer schedule; very few relish the planning and spreadsheets and carpool rota involved in keeping their kids safe and occupied.
From Salon ● Jun. 24, 2026
A person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost.
From "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy
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
“It seemed like they just cobbled up these ideas at the last minute,” he said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 9, 2026
Rucci searched for land along Imperial Valley’s towering power lines and cobbled together dusty lots in an abandoned industrial area next to a giant Homeland Security complex and a housing development.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 19, 2026
"It's kind of a Frankenstein's monster of a policy change that's been kind of cobbled together," he said.
From BBC ● Apr. 12, 2026
The stranger guided our horse down a cobbled walk to a stable nearly as imposing as the house.
From "The Shakespeare Stealer" by Gary L. Blackwood
She has approached smaller foundations like the Rose Foundation, an environmental group based in Oakland, in hopes of cobbling together enough smaller pots of money for a large project.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026
Surprised by this unusual cobbling together of Hindu and Muslim names, the vigilantes left.
From BBC ● Feb. 12, 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
Workers scrambled to get the pumping system back online, patching the hoses that could be salvaged and cobbling together any new hoses they could find to replace the ones that could not.
From "Meltdown" by Deirdre Langeland
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.
