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 .
1897		Mirror of Life 1 Sept. 3/1: [O]ne of the most widely circulated papers in the world says :—‘Dicky is an ungrateful, unpatriotic slob’.
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.
2024		C. Stella Joey Piss Pot 266: ‘Always think the worst, Mary [...] That should be your nickname.’ ‘And fat slob should be yours’.

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.