cub

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /kʌb/

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

• (Northern England, Ireland) IPA^(key): /kʊb/
• Rhymes: -ʌb

From earlier cubbe. Origin unknown. According to Pokorny, from Proto-Germanic *kubb-, from Proto-Indo-European *gup- (“round object, knoll”), from *gew- (“to bend, curve, arch, vault”).^[1]

Compare Icelandic and Old Norse kobbi (“seal”), Old Irish cuib (“whelp”).^[2] Compare also English cob.

• cubbe (obsolete)

 

cub (plural cubs)

1. A young fox.
   • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 32, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:

     a Childe of Lacedemon suffered all his belly and gutts to be torne out by a Cubbe or young Foxe, which he had stolne, and kept close under his garment, rather then he would discover his theft.

2. (by extension) The young of certain other animals, including the bear, wolf, lion and tiger.
3. (humorous or derogatory) A child, especially an awkward, rude, ill-mannered boy.
   • c. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:

     O, thou dissembling cub! what wilt thou be / When time hath sowed a grizzle on thy case?

4. (slang) A young man who seeks relationships with older women, or "cougars".
5. (obsolete) A stall for cattle.
   • 1824, Walter Savage Landor, “Conversation XIII. Peter Leopold and President Du Paty.”, in Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, volume I, London: […] Taylor and Hessey, […], →OCLC, page 193:

     [...] I would rather have such a good mother in cub or kennel, than in my closet, or at my table.

6. Synonym of cub reporter
   • 1978, The Journalism Quarterly, volume 55, page 652:

     Swain has interviewed 67 reporters on 16 metropolitan dailies in 10 cities — from cubs to veterans — who talk candidly […]

   • 2018, Randall S. Sumpter, Before Journalism Schools:

     […] from competing publications and the editors of publications that might buy freelance material from cubs.

7. (furry fandom) A furry character who is a child.
8. (Northern Ireland, Ulster) A boy or young man.

   Coordinate term: cutty

   • 1993, Ray Givans, No Surrender, Castlecaulfield, Lapwing Publications, →ISBN, page 14:

     A man who reared ten cubs and three cutties.

   • 2016 September 12, Henry Glassie, The Stars of Ballymenone, Indiana University Press, →ISBN, page 229:

     The point of the example is educational, moral, and the moral qualities of the stories attracted Peter Flanagan who remembered them from childhood and told them to the cutties and cubs when he was, for them, a funny old man.

cub (third-person singular simple present cubs, present participle cubbing, simple past and past participle cubbed)

1. To give birth to cubs.
2. To hunt fox cubs.
   • 1943, Stuart Palmer, The Puzzle of the Silver Persian:

     He knew that, only a few hours from London, the Hunt was cubbing over his ancestral and much-mortgaged acres, while his own horse ate its head off in a stable.

3. (obsolete) To shut up or confine.
   • 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC:

     to fall from heaven to hell, to be cubbed up upon a sudden

cub (plural cubs)

1. Acronym of cashed up bogan.

• cub fos (etymologically unrelated)

• UCB, BUC, UBC

Borrowed from Slavic;^[1] compare Serbo-Croatian ćȕba (“tuft, crest”), Polish czub (“tuft, crest”).

However, Mann posits that the noun might be from Gothic 𐌸𐌹𐌿𐍆𐍃 (þiufs).^[2]

cub (feminine cube)

1. bobtailed, having a docked tail
2. awnless (of grain)

Borrowed from Germanic.^[3]

cub m (plural cuba, definite cubi, definite plural cubat)

1. mountain bandit, robber, brigand, highwayman
2. (figurative) crazy hero, crazy fool

Borrowed from Latin cubus.

• IPA^(key): (Central, Balearic, Valencia) [ˈkup]

• Audio:

  (file)

cub m (plural cubs)

1. cube (regular polyhedron having six square faces)
2. (mathematics) cube (the third power of a number)

• cúbic

• “cub” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.

Borrowed from French cube, from Latin cubus.

cub n (plural cuburi)

1. cube

Borrowed from Irish caobach.

• IPA^(key): /kʊb/

cub

1. A small gull.

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 32