a small pocket just below the waistline in pants, designed for a watch, keys, change, etc.
especially formerly,
a short chain or ribbon, usually with a medallion or similar ornament, attached to a watch and worn hanging from a pocket.
the medallion or ornament itself.
The fob allows students 24/7 access into the residence building and their rooms.
I could never find my nail clipper in my purse, so now I’m using it as a fob on my keychain.
a chain or ribbon by which a pocket watch is attached to a waistcoat
any ornament hung on such a chain
a small pocket in a man's waistcoat, for holding a watch
a metal or plastic tab on a key ring
First recorded in 1645–55; origin uncertain; compare dialectal German Fuppe, Low German Fobke “pocket”
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English fobben; perhaps cognate with German foppen “to delude, kid, tease” ( cf. fop) or, alternatively, akin to French fourbe “cheat, swindler” (from Old French forbir “to clean”; see furbish ( def. ))
First recorded in 1870–75
A fob is a chain that holds an old-fashioned pocket watch. If your grandfather carries his watch around in a little pocket in his vest, it's probably attached with a fob. It's uncommon to see a watch fob these days, but they were once as ordinary as the watches they held. The little pockets sewn in men's clothing were also fobs, and today, a key chain is sometimes called a fob. When fob is a verb, it means to fool people or play a trick on them, especially by giving them something less valuable than they expect. This meaning is from the obsolete fobbe, "cheater."
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Still they forgot things, like a $600 spare key fob for Frank’s truck.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 20, 2026
"We get tons of people inquiring about stories, and normally we kind of fob them off a bit," he said.
From BBC ● Jun. 1, 2026
The doors typically don’t unlock when I approach the car until I pull out the key fob and hit the unlock button.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 20, 2025
If you want to stop the key fob signal altogether, you can turn off the feature, Sutter said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 26, 2025
He cupped his bloodstone watch fob in his palm.
From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros
Compared with those for the new Model A Ford, they are, f.o.b.
From Time Magazine Archive
The U.S. will buy the tin outright at $1.18 a pound, f.o.b.
From Time Magazine Archive
The first automobile to be mass-produced in the U.S., it sold for $650 f.o.b.
From Time Magazine Archive
List price, lowest of the Hillman line: $1,445 f.o.b. port of entry.
From Time Magazine Archive
Man, Isle of $NA Marshall Islands $54 million f.o.b.
From The 2005 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency
"They're in all modern cell phones, key fobs, garage door openers, most GPS receivers, many radar systems and more."
From Science Daily ● Jan. 17, 2026
Hikers carry fobs and must scan in at four checkpoints 7 miles apart and depart by a certain time or quit.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 27, 2025
The watchdog identified an "inflexible and indiscriminate" approach to the use of key fobs to control access to internal doors and gates, regardless of whether service users had capacity.
From BBC ● May 15, 2025
If you buy a used car, some experts also advise getting the keys reprogrammed, just in case the previous owner kept one of the fobs.
From Seattle Times ● May 16, 2024
It’s then that I remember the email that said we’d need our key fobs to access the pool if we wanted to swim before eight a.m. on weekdays.
From "Red Flags and Butterflies" by Sheryl Azzam
It heard he should have been identified as a threat and action taken sooner after he was reported as suspicious by a member of the public, who was "fobbed off".
From BBC ● Dec. 18, 2025
"I feel totally fobbed off by Bellway," he says.
From BBC ● Jan. 13, 2025
She said she felt "fobbed off" when she told doctors about her constipation and rectal bleeding.
From BBC ● Dec. 22, 2024
Many workers whose wages or workplace conditions were effectively dictated by big companies that fobbed their responsibilities onto franchise owners would consider that anything but a drawback.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 13, 2024
His grievance was this: that while a rival show across the river had been accorded a military picket by the War Office, he had been fobbed off with a mere guard of Special Constables.
From Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 by Various
"I feel that they're fobbing me off really. I've reported this crime. It is the police's job to investigate it," she said.
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2025
They’re asking that HHS deal directly with their case instead of fobbing it off to the NIH, which would bring it under the purview of HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 24, 2023
A major challenge will be keeping researchers from simply treating the requirement as another box to tick or fobbing the work off on minority scientists, Hodari says.
From Science Magazine ● Oct. 4, 2022
“You can’t play those parts by just looking at them and fobbing them off,” he said.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 13, 2019
There are some admirable scenes in Ben Jonson's Volpone, showing the humours of a legacy-hunter, and the different ways of fobbing him off with excuses and assurances of not being forgotten.
From Table Talk Essays on Men and Manners by Hazlitt, William
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.
