Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a lazy, dirty, unkempt, good-for-nothing person, usu. a man.

1861		A.H. Clington Frank O’Donnell 101: A heavy-looking poor slob of a man .
1899		W.J. Kountz Billy Baxter’s Letters 50: A great big slob running along behind some little bit of a girl.
1905		H. Green Actors’ Boarding House (1906) 36: That guy’s a slob [...] but he’s got the idee he’s a grand affair.
1917		E.E. Cummings in Dupee & Stade Sel. Letters (1972) 4 June 26: By failing to get up at the hour of 5.45 AM I escaped departing with the bums mutts and jeffs (not to say ginks, slobs, and punks) who came over with us.
1925		S. Lewis Arrowsmith 228: There’s a lot of careless, ignorant, foreign slobs.
1939		J. Weidman What’s In It For Me? 382: He’s bled enough Seventh Avenue slobs dry with his hock shop.
1942		‘Digg Mee’ ‘Observation Post’ in N.Y. Age 10 Jan. 9/6: [of a woman] She quit her job and became a slob.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 65: I found that big slob sitting out there on a beer barrel.
1951		J.D. Salinger Catcher in the Rye (1958) 31: Ackley was a slob in his personal habits.
1968		J. Hersey Algiers Motel Incident 116: Some nights my partner will dress well and I’ll dress like a slob.
1977		E. Bunker Animal Factory 88: I wish the big slob was here.
1988		D. Woodrell Muscle for the Wing 88: You fuckin’ slobs.
1998		D. Remnick King of the World 157: Never mind Rocky Marciano was a slob who would show up at events in a T-shirt.
2000		T. Blacker Kill Your Darlings 89: With that fat slob, Self?
2012		IOL Cape Western News (SA) 14 Feb. 🌐 Stop giving this fat slob press coverage.
2013		D. Whish-Wilson Zero at the Bone [ebook] The girl was a slob, like most junkies.
2016		Rolling Stone 14 Oct. 🌐 When you let a hands-y, drunken slob loose at an aristocrats' ball, the satirical power of the story comes from the aristocrats deserving what comes next.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1938		H.M. Anderson Strip Tease 10: [T]hree assorted trollops [who] will laugh immoderately at the slob comic who wipes his nose of the straight man’s lapel.
1953		S. Bellow Augie March (1996) 85: Hurt, decent manhood [...] a horsehair coil or ragged ball of slob virility.

3. an average person, ‘Joe Public’.

1879		C.J. Kickham Knocknagow 201: She was fond uv the slob – but she hadn’t the fortune.
1899–1900		C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 28: I’m not such a soft slob, either.
1904		St Paul Globe (MN) 7 Aug. 27/2: Course. Enny slob’d know that.
1908		H. Green Maison De Shine 68: A guy that could win you out’d be a lucky slob, all right.
1953		W.P. McGivern Big Heat 138: This was their city, their private, beautifully rigged slot machine, and to hell with the few million slobs who just happened to live in the place.
a.1964		‘Honky-Tonk Bud’ in D. Wepman et al. Life (1976) 59: He’s an honest slob who’s just doing his job.
1978		R. Price Ladies’ Man (1985) 96: I felt like a pig, or one of the over-thirty establishment slobs.
1993		G.P. Pelecanos Nick’s Trip 216: So let’s see what you got, quick, before [...] I make you come in on order day like every other slob’.
2010		(con. 1973) C. Stella Johnny Porno 38: It’s nothing I’m proud of [...] being another working slob.

4. a harmless simpleton, a ‘soft’, fat fellow.

1892		Brooklyn Dly Eagle (NY) 4 Dec. 3/7: Slob [...] will whistle and dance and wait for many years to come, unless his indulgent parents are taken from him.
1904		Number 1500 Life In Sing Sing 252: Slob. A person easy to impose on.
1905		‘Hugh McHugh’ Get Next 31: I’m a slob on that bridge whist thing.
1910		P.W. Joyce Eng. As We Speak It In Ireland (1979) 327: Slob; a soft fat quiet simple-minded girl or boy.
1938		D. Runyon ‘A Piece of Pie’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 679: Hilda tells me at once that she will never marry a fat slob.
1943		W.R. Burnett Nobody Lives for Ever 21: He’d certainly been pulling some funny ones lately. Getting bugs over that chiseling Chicago dame; letting her make a slob out of him in front of his friends .
1952		Lait & Mortimer USA Confidential 47: The members of this new caste are no better than the uneducated slobs to whom they profess to be superior.
1963		B. Hecht Gaily, Gaily 19: My lawyer proved how that fat slob hollerin’ day and night deprived me of my sanity.
1976		J. Braine Waiting for Sheila (1977) 127: The lout, the hooligan, the slob.
1980		M. Bail Homesickness (1999) 207: All right, I’ll be a slob [...] another beer.

5. in ext. use of sense 1, used of objects.

1904

‘Hugh McHugh’ I’m from Missouri 44: Uncle Peter handed me a fat slob of a chequebook.

6. (US gang) a derog. term used by Crip gangs for their rivals the Bloods; also attrib.

1991		L. Bing Do or Die (1992) 63: I was puttin’ in work every day. I’d go blastin’ slobs.
1993		K. Scott Monster (1994) 133: Fuck you slob-ass muthafuckas, this is ET muckafuckin’ G, fool.
1997		G. Sikes 8 Ball Chicks (1998) 238: ‘Yeah! You ain’t gonna let the slobs’ — she used the derogatory word for Bloods — ‘just come over here and beat him up.’.
2001		(con. 1990s) in J. Miller One of the Guys 60: ‘A Blood is a Slob to me’.
2008		www.gangwar.com 🌐 SLOBS is the ‘put down’ word used by Crips and Folks (who appear to be loosely aligning) to describe Blood gang members.
2023		Rayman & Blau Riker’s 76: I heard him tell his girlfriend in the street that the ‘slobs,’ that was his slang for the Bloods, had [...] cut him.