Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (orig. UK Und., also nobb) the head; thus constr. with a to mean each, a time.

c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Nob c. a head.
1711		N. Ward Vulgus Britannicus I 13: But were, as Nob declares in spite, / By dint of Number always Right.
1725		New Canting Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1730		K. O’Hara Tom Thumb I iii: Do pop up your nob again, / And ’egad I’ll crack your crown.
1746		‘A Bloody Battle between a Taylor and a Louse’ in Ebsworth Roxburghe Ballads (1891) VII:2 478: He hit him o’er the Nob, made the taylor sigh and sob.
1753		J. Poulter Discoveries (1774) 43: Mill his Nobb; break his Head.
1762		Bridges Homer Travestie (1764) I 138: I plainly see, thy nob, old grandsire, / Is wiser far than other noddles.
1774		J. O’Keeffe Tony Lumpkin in Town (1780) 28: You’re to paint fine large powder’d pretty wigs upon every head in this room, at [...] half a crown a nob.
1782		G. Parker Humorous Sketches 155: Here no despotic power shews / Oppression’s haughty nob.
1789		Both Sides of the Gutter part II 11: His speech in his fist, and his spectacles on his nob.
c.1790		‘Lord Altham’s Bull’ in Walsh Ireland Ninety Years Ago (1885) 89: Oh! den he laid about wid his nob.
c.1805		‘Honest Bob’ in Jovial Songster 115: In gay fangl’d garments I never was drest, / Nor stuck up my nob in a coach.
1812		Spirit of Irish Wit 265: Of the muz in his nob he wish’d much to get rid.
c.1813		‘This London Agrah!’ Wellington’s Laurels 8: A great hulking fellow [...] gave me a terrible thump on the nob.
c.1824		A. Tennyson Devil and the Lady (1930) III i 55: I’ll [...] uncork The claret of your nob, and dim your daylights, And make your ivories chatter in the tusk-box.
1834		York Herald 3 May 4/3: You blasted old governor, and I’m blest if I don’t burst open your jolly nob.
1834		Ely’s Hawk & Buzzard (NY) Sept. 6 n.p.: Sam [...] sent in his left, with plenty of elbow grease, on Gaynor’s nob.
1839		(con. 1715) W.H. Ainsworth Jack Sheppard (1917) 89: A well-directed hit on the nob.
1841		‘Parson And The Quaker’ Dublin Comic Songster 37: A jolly-faced parson once happened to pop, / Into Simon Pure’s plain dealing every day shop, / To look out for a hat that would just fit his nob.
1841		Sun. Flash (NY) 12 Sept. n.p.: [A] heavy blow with his right on Brassey’s nob.
1843		Satirist & Sporting Chron. (Sydney) 4 Feb. 2/2: He aimed a dreadful chopper at Baily’s nob.
1844		New Sprees of London 13: This crib is open three nights a week; the charge, a duce a nob, the other cribs a win a nob, and mangling done every night.
1848		Sam Sly 23 Dec. 4/3: Dick put a couple of balls in his nob, / And purwailed on him to stop.
1853		N.Y. Clipper 6 Aug. 1/7: [T]wo hard knocks on Massey’s impenetrable nob, one high up behind the right ear.
1857		‘Leary Man’ in ‘Ducange Anglicus’ Vulgar Tongue (1857) 42: And when you go to spree about, / Let it always be your pride / To have a white tile on your nob / And a bulldog by your side.
1857		Bell’s Life in Sydney 23 May 2/7: Jones planted his left very slightly on the side of Tom’s nob.
1860		N.E. Police Gaz. (Boston, MA) 18 Aug. 6/4: Edw—d B—s, the Leonard street red nob.
1868		‘A New Litany on Reform’ in C. Hindley Curiosities of Street Lit. (1871) 78: Dicky, how is your poor nob?
1873		J. O’Connor Wanderings of a Vagabond 312: But a rough-and-tumble bully soon discovered himself at a great disadvantage, when faced by a shoulder-hitter who could score one on his nob once a minute and coolly step out of the reach of punishment himself.
1884		Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday 8 May 7/2: And a sorter radiant halo / Gleamed brightly round his nob.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 7 Feb. 11/1: Why, boys have hit you on the nob, / And challenged you out for a bob.
1886		Sporting Times 30 Jan. 6/1: Not a common, pokey little party at nine d. a nob for tea and cresses [...] but real good business, cocky.
1889		Times-Democrat (New Orleans, LA) 9 July 3/6: Prize Ring Slang [...] ‘Brain canister’, ‘lob,’ ‘nob,’ ‘lolly,’ the head.
1890		Paddy Melon ‘Jack and Jim’ Sporting Times 4 Jan. 3: Get this fact into your nob, / You’re a broker ‘on your uppers,’ I’m a broker ‘on the job’.
1892		E.J. Milliken ’Arry Ballads 40: Why shouldn’t her stage trotter-out take his perks too at so much a nob.
1893		P.H. Emerson Signor Lippo frontispiece: Though poor you be, try spare a bob / To engrave these lines just o’er my nob.
1894		Truth (Sydney) 22 Apr. 1/2: The Belgian Society dame, who poisoned her relatives at £2000 a nob.
1902		Bulletin (Sydney) 6 Sept. 25/1: If you want to get an idea of the art of up-to-date hair-dressing, put in some time at any of the Melbourne bun-temples and there study the crown-pieces of the waitresses. [...] A black velvet bow is aslant the ‘nob’ of one, Jap. ornaments stab another pile, a white satin bow rides the under-crest of another thatch, and so, in various ways, the coiffure take shape.
1908		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘Lure of the Lucre’ Sporting Times 1 Aug. 1/4: What makes me fairly mad / Is the fact that I’ve been cut out by my own bald-nobbed grand-dad.
1915		‘Buccaneers’ Seven Seas Sept. in Lomax & Lomax Amer. Ballads and Folk Songs (1934) n.p.: The skipper lay with his nob in gore, / Where the scullion’s ax his cheek had shore.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 723: With the childs bonnet on the top of his nob.
1924		C.J. Dennis ‘A Woman’s Way’ in Chisholm (1951) 88: I’ve got too wise a nob / To be took in.
c.1938		‘You Nazi Man’ [comic strip] in B. Adelman Tijuana Bibles (1997) 129: They’ll get their nobs chopped off.
1940		M. Marples Public School Slang 96: HEAD: Of the forty-two slang synonyms for head listed by Farmer, only block, chump, napper, nob and nut are associated with schools.
1953		L. Durst Jives of Dr. Hepcat (1989) 7: Before I come on with the gas I’ve got to pick up on a barber because my rug needs much dusting after I get with the moss snatcher the nob will be in great shape.
1962		Ragen & Finston World’s Toughest Prison 810: nob – The head.

2. (UK Und.) a hat.

1754		G. Stevens ‘A Cant Song’ Muses Delight 177: She’d nail’d a rum cove of tilter and nob, / But in filing his tatler was routed.
1821		‘Battle’ in Fancy I XVII 403: Boreas too [...] did took unwarrantable liberties with the nobs of the company, without making any distinction between Corinthian and Commoner, and many a hero’s topper was not replaced on his napper, without scampering a quarter of a mile or more for it.
1831		‘Gallery of 140 Comicalities’ Bell’s Life in London 24 June 1/4: I say, Bill, I’ve got his ticker! – pull his precious nob! [hat].

3. in fig. use, to mean first or front.

1827

Egan Anecdotes of the Turf, the Chase etc. 184: At the nob of the party were Headstrong Bob, Drunken Jack, &c.

4. a blow on the head.

1937–84

Partridge DSUE (1984) 798: from ca. 1810.

5. (UK Und.) a young boy prisoner who bullies weaker ones.

1839

H. Brandon Poverty, Mendicity and Crime; Report 9: There are what are called ‘Nobs,’ perhaps little boys not higher than the table. I have seen them myself, take a broomstick and strike a boy over the arm, almost to break it, and the other dared not say a single word to him.

6. a sovereign.

1862		Worcs. Chron. 12 Nov. 4/1: I shall let old Abraham, the Sheeney, have it at four punt and half a nob (4l. 10s.).
1895		Mirror of Life 12 Jan. 15/2: [I]f Sam, or Dick, or Bob, / Goes all day long without a nob,' / His wares he cannot eat.
1937		Nott. Eve. Post 30 Apr. 6/3: Lesser known nicknames for sovereigns [...] ‘chip’ [...] ‘canary,’ ‘nob,’ ‘old Mr Gory’ [...] and ‘shiner’.
1937–84		Partridge DSUE (1984) 798: ca. 1840–90.

7. the penis [var. of knob n. (1c)].

1834		‘Silver Nob’ in Randy Songster in Spedding & Watt (eds) I 189: Since by your knife I’ve lost my nob, / To please my wife it will be a hard job.
1837–8		‘Wry-Mouth Bob And His Jolly Red Nob’ in Cuckold’s Nest 45: Wry-mouth Bob had a jolly red nob, / In a place – but you all know where.
1956		‘The Bastard King of England’ in ‘Count P. Vicarion’ Bawdy Ballads XI: The Royal nob hung next his knees / Twelve inches long and a two inch span.
1959		A. Sillitoe ‘Noah’s Ark’ Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1960) 101: Rule two tanners / Two tanners make a bob, / King George nevernevernever / shaves his nob!
1984		A. Sayle Train to Hell 21: What a fucking nob-headed, shit-faced, bollock-brained, turd-shaped, prick-arsed, wanker-faced cunt!
1998		J. O’Connor Salesman 100: Strides down, head down, nob in the gob.

8. (mainly Aus.) a go, an item.

1860		R. Nicholson Rogue’s Progress (1966) 99: Our Joe has a dinner every Good Friday, at half-a-crown a nob.
1906		Sun. Times (Perth) 5 Aug. 4/8: The mob from Bayley’s mine / Paid forty bob a nob to wash the barmaid’s blouse in wine.
1909		Sun. Times (Perth) 7 Mar. 45/7: Like lambs that are thirsty we rushed / The bob-a-nob, muddy shy-poo.
1924		E.G. Murphy ‘Nickin’ In’ Dryblower’s Verses 63: ‘Peanuts, apples, lemonade!’ / Yelled the gallery man of old / While his aitches round were sprayed / As the bob-a-nob he strolled.
1931		‘William Hatfield’ Sheepmates 72: There’s too big of a mob fer one man to shout the house on his pat at a zac a pop, so you shove in a deaner a nob and flip the rats an’ mice, see?
1938		H. Drake-Brockman Men Without Wives II i: Three quid a nob fer bullocks don’t run ter trips south.
1954		Sun Herald (Sydney) 14 Feb. 52.3: Get your juicy meat pies - only a bob a nob.

9. (Aus., also knob) a double-headed penny, esp. as used in the game of two-up, produced by filing down standard coins and welding them together.

1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 1 Aug. 12/2: There are a lot of speculations as to what [his] ‘grossest case of robbery that has ever taken place in the colony’ is. The general opinion in sporting circles is that ‘someone has rung in the nob on the man who had the kip and let the mug collar the plunder’.
1900–10		Stephens & O’Brien Materials for a Dict. of Aus. Sl. [unpub. ms.] 163: The only fraud possible [in two-up] is the substitution of either a two-headed or two-tailed penny – a trick known as ‘ringing in’ a ‘nob’ or a ‘gray.’.
1904		Sun. Times (Perth) 22 May 4/8: I don’t spin a nob or a grey.
1907		Eve. Teleg. (Charters Towers) 29 Apr. 2/5: Besides they claim two-up is a game of skill that defies police interference, yet (anyone who has ever played the game knows the only skill attached to it is ‘ringing in’ a ‘knob’ (two-headed coin), or ‘grey’ (two tails), which is termed ‘spinning the planet,’ and is usually done from a slot underneath the kip.
1919		Mirror (Sydney) 31 Aug. 8/2: The ‘nob,’ or double-headed penny, and the ‘shieler,’ or double-tailed ‘woman,’ are made by filing the coins down and soldering them together again. Such good jobs are made of them that often it is very hard to detect the join.
1924		(con. WWI) A.G. Pretty Gloss. Sl. [...] in the A.I.F. 1921–1924 (rev. t/s) n.p.: nob. A double headed penny (‘two-up.’).
1941		Baker Popular Dict. Aus. Sl. 41: Knob, a double-headed penny.
1948		R. Raven-Hart Canoe in Aus. 187: Pennies supplied by ‘school’ to avoid ‘nobs’, ‘jacks’, double-sided heads, ‘greys’, double-sided tails.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 150: Early kips (also called lannets) are said to have been masterpieces of carpentry often with secret compartments used to hide double-headed (nob, jack) or double-tailed (gray) pennies.

10. see knob n. (1d)

11. a socially inept person [fig. use of sense 7].

1972		Eble Campus Sl. Oct. 4: nob – nerd.
1996		Eble Sl. and Sociability 59: Derogatory epithets abound, for example [...] jerk face, nob, punk, quimp.