shab

• IPA^(key): /ʃæb/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æb

From Middle English shabbe, schabbe, from Old English sċeabb, from Proto-West Germanic *skabb, from Proto-Germanic *skabbaz. Doublet of scab.

shab (countable and uncountable, plural shabs)

1. (obsolete, UK, dialect) Scabies.
2. (obsolete, UK, dialect) A scab.

shab (third-person singular simple present shabs, present participle shabbing, simple past and past participle shabbed)

1. (obsolete) To scratch; to rub.
   • 1698, George Farquhar, Love and a Bottle:

     I have shabbed him off purely

See scab.

shab (third-person singular simple present shabs, present participle shabbing, simple past and past participle shabbed)

1. (obsolete, UK, dialect) To move (something, away or out of the way), to drive off.
   • 1677, W. Howard, Narrative, postscript, T 3 b:

     Certain Nipnets intended to have sheltred themselves under Vncas; but he perceiving it would be distastful to the English, soon shab'd them off.

   • 1698 Farquhar, Love & Bottle, iv. iii:

     I have shabb'd him off purely.

   • ante 1824, in Mactaggart, Gallovid. Encycl., 347:

     They shab'd […] Thomas aff to hell.

   • 1828, Thomas Crofton Croker, Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, page 212:

     […] but when that [money] was gone, and he had not as much ground, that he could call his own, as would sod a lark, they soon shabbed him off.

   • 1840, John Pendleton Kennedy, Quodlibet: Containing Some Annals Thereof ..., page 61:

     I hold the people in too much esteem, to shab them off with any thing of a secondary quality, whilst Providence has blessed me with the means of providing them the best.

2. (obsolete outside historical fiction, UK, criminal slang) To skulk or sneak away.
   • 1731, The Windsor Medley: Being a Choice Collection of Several Curious and Valuable Pieces in Prose and Verse: that Were Handed about in Print and Manuscript, During the Stay of the Court at Windsor-Castle Last Summer. ..., page 24:

     […] and so the fat Parson shabb'd off, […]

   • 2017 February 23, Jake Arnott, The Fatal Tree, Sceptre, →ISBN:

     We bided a moment as the push we were part of moved forward and took the opportunity to slip deftly back through it, thus shabbing off from our prey.

• “shab”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• AHBs, Bahs, Bash, HABs, HBAs, Habs, bahs, bash, habs