drub - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
From Middle English *drob, drof, from Old English *drōb, drōf (“turbid; dreggy; dirty”), from Proto-West Germanic *drōbī, from Proto-Germanic *drōbuz (“turbid”).
drub (usually uncountable, plural drubs)
- (dialectal, Northern England) Carbonaceous shale; small coal; slate, dross, or rubbish in coal.
1625, of uncertain origin:
- Perhaps from Arabic ضَرَبَ (ḍaraba, “to beat, hit”),[1]
- or perhaps originally from a dialectal word (Kent) drab, variant of drop, dryp, drib (“to beat”), from Middle English drepen (preterit drop, drap, drape (“struck, killed”)) from Old English drepan (“to strike”), from Proto-West Germanic *drepan, from Proto-Germanic *drepaną (“to beat, bump, strike, slay”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰreb⁽ʰ⁾- (“to strike, crush, kill”).
- Linguist Guus Kroonen suggests that it reflects the Proto-Germanic verb *drubbōną, iterative to *drabaną (“to hit, hew”), as found in Norwegian drubba (“to fall over”).[2]
Akin to Old Frisian drop (“a blow, beat”), Old High German treffan (“to hit”), Old Norse drepa (“to strike, slay, kill”). Compare also dub. More at drape.
drub (third-person singular simple present drubs, present participle drubbing, simple past and past participle drubbed) (transitive)
- To beat (someone or something) with a stick.
- To defeat someone soundly; to annihilate or crush.
- To forcefully teach something.
- To criticize harshly; to excoriate.
- ^ “drub”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.
- ^ Kroonen, Guus (2013), “*drupp/bōn- 1”, in Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 11)[1], Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 105