Squab, subs. (old).—1. Anything fat, short, and dumpy. Hence (2) a fat sofa or well-filled bed. As adj. (squabby, squaddy, squatty, squabbish, &c.) = fat and short, heavy, bulky (in quot. 1756 = short, abrupt).—Grose. As verb. = to fall heavily, to plump down.
1593. Greene, News from Heaven and Hell. A fatte squaddy monke that had been well fedde in some cloyster.
1666. Harvey, Of Consumption. Diet makes them of a squabbish or lardy habit of body.
1675. Wycherley, Country Wife, iv. 3. A little squab French page who speaks no English.
1692. L'Estrange, Æsop. The eagle took the tortoise up in the air, and dropt him down, Squab, upon a rock.
c. 1708. Pope, Artemisia [Chalmers, Eng. Poets, xii. 211]. 'Artemisia.' On her large squab you find her spread, Like a fat corpse upon a bed.
1712. Betterton, Miller of Trompington. Nor the squab daughter nor the wife were nice.
1714. Addison, Spectator, 529. Seated . . . upon a squab.
1716. Pope, Letter, 'To Lady M. W. Montague,' 18 Aug. We shall then see how the prudes of this world owed all their fine figure only to their being a little straiter laced; and that they were naturally as arrant squabs as those that went more loose.
1759. Goldsmith, Bee, No. 2. A French woman is a perfect architect in dress. . . . She never tricks out a squabby Doric shape with Corinthian finery.
1756. Walpole, To Mann, 25 July, iii. 125. We have returned a squab answer.
1855. Gaskell, North and South, xii. Bessie, herself, lay on a squab, or short sofa, placed under the window.
1865. Major Downing, May-Day. I had hardly got seated when in came a great, stout, fat, squaddy woman.
1870. Judd, Margaret, ii. 11. Ladies in . . . short cloaks, with hoods squabbing behind.
1885. D. Tel., 10 Sep. The squabby stone structure.
2. (colloquial).—An inexperienced person; a fledgling. As adj. = callow (q.v.), coy, quiet.
1635. Brome, Sparagus Garden, ii. 2. Brit. Is he a trim youth? Mon. We must make him one, Jacke: 'tis such a squab . . . such a lumpe.
1689. Nat. Lee, Princess of Cleves, iii. 1. Your demure ladies that are so squob in company are devils in a corner.
d. 1712. W. King, The Old Cheese [Chalmers, Eng. Poets, ix. 297.] Why must old pigeons, and they stale, be drest, When there's so many squab ones in the nest.
1781. Cowper, Prog. of Error, 218. Gorgonius sits, abdominous and wan, Like a fat squab upon a Chinese fan.
Verb. (King Edward's School, B'gham).—To squeeze by: also squob: with foot on wall or desk, and back against the victim who is similarly treated on the other side, or pressed against the opposite wall. Also squab-up = to push.
Squabash, verb. (old colloquial).—To
crush. As subs. = a flattening
out; spiflication (q.v.).
1827. Scott, Diary, 17 Jan. His satire . . . squabashed at one blow, a set of coxcombs who might have humbugged the world long enough.
1830. Intelligencer, 11 Ap. Compared with the sarcastic irony which squabashes poor Mr. Nicholas Carlisle.
1833. M. Advtr., 1 July. A squabash of the growing incumbrance of chivalrous novels.
1837. Barham, Ingolds. Leg., 'House Warming.' Harry the Sixth who, instead Of being squabashed, as in Shakespeare we've read, Caught a bad influenza, and died in his bed.
Squabbled, adj. (printers').—'Broken':
of type which, after
'setting,' has been knocked so
much awry that it is a painstaking
job to prevent it going to pi (q.v.).
Squaddle, verb. (American).—To
decamp; to absquatulate
(q.v.).
