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Cobblers   /kˈɑblərz/   Listen
Cobblers

noun
1.
Nonsense.
2.
A man's testicles (from Cockney rhyming slang: cobbler's awl rhymes with ball).






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Cobblers" Quotes from Famous Books



... bulls and bears to buy up the estates of half the fools hereabout. But that is nothing; I can assure you, men are living in halls and abbeys in these parts, who began their lives in butchers' shops and cobblers' stalls." ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... aid him, and as, moreover, he was forced to be at Emmet Priory that very morning upon matters of business, he was fain either to don the cobbler's clothes or travel the road in nakedness. So he put on the clothes, and, still raging and swearing vengeance against all the cobblers in Derbyshire, he set forth upon his way afoot; but his ills had not yet done with him, for he had not gone far ere he fell into the hands of the King's men, who marched him off, willy-nilly, to Tutbury Town and the Bishop of Hereford. In vain he swore he was a holy man, and showed his shaven ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... he's my ancestor," Bertram put in, quite pleased at the discovery. "That is to say," he added after a curious pause, "my ancestor's descendant. Almost all my people, a little way back, you see, were shoe-makers or cobblers." ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... Chester, the humours of which, it should seem, the worthy constable, witless of his lord's peril, was then enjoying. He immediately got together, in the words of my authority, "a great, lawless mob of fiddlers, players, cobblers, and such like," and marched towards the earl. The Welsh, although a musical people, not relishing this sort of chorus, thought it prudent to beat a retreat, and fled. The earl, by this well-timed presto-movement, being released from danger, returned with his constable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various

... eh, Annie? And sweet potatoes. Jock loves 'em. And corn au gratin and some head lettuce." She glanced toward Jock in the hallway, then lowered her voice. "Annie," she teased, "just give us one of your peach cobblers, will you? You see he—he's going to be awfully—tired when he ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber

... round until the resistance becomes really strong. Then pull the stick through to the notch, into which the string will settle, and tie it at each side, so that it is not likely to slip either way. A little piece of cobblers' wax must be put on the bone on the other side to that where the stick naturally touches. Pull the stick right over to stick on the wax, and lay the skipjack, stick downward, on the ground. In a little while the wax will give ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... beautiful, more refined than our art; nothing more remunerative; we deal with the blessing of God, for we prepare the daily bread. The Lord's Prayer includes the baker, 'Give us this day our daily bread.' Is there any mention anywhere of butchers, of tailors or of cobblers? Well, does anyone pray for meat, for coats, or for books? Let me hear about him. But they do pray for their daily bread, don't they? And does the prayer-book say anything concerning councillors? What? Who knows ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... well too may the issue of a strong hop learn to hop all over England, when as better wits sit, like lame cobblers, in their studies. Such barmy heads will always be working, when as sad vinegar wits sit souring at the bottom of a barrel; plain meteors, bred of the exhalation of tobacco and the vapours of a moist pot, that soar[38] up into the open air, when as ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... lantern-jawed, with several days' growth of beard. Most of them carry rude weapons— staves, bill-hooks, crow-bars, and the like—and are in as excited a condition as the women. Some of them are bare-headed, others affect a kind of Phrygian cap. Cobblers predominate. ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm

... Cobblers set afloat their establishments, calling attention to the fact by the creaking sign of a boot; and here on the rushing river a man can have his heel tapped as easily ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... caution hath seal'd up both ears of Spite, And critics sleep while you in staves do sound The praise of long-dead Saints, whose Days abound In wintry months; but Crispin chief proclaim: Who stirs not at that Prince of Cobblers' name? Profuse in loyalty some couplets shine, And wish long days to all the Brunswick line! To youths and virgins they chaste lessons read; Teach wives and husbands how their lives to lead; Maids to be cleanly, footmen free from vice: How death at last all ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... for gain, but in charity, to do good, they made neither art, profession, nor trade of it, which in other places was accustomed: and therefore Cambyses in [4099]Xenophon told Cyrus, that to his thinking, physicians "were like tailors and cobblers, the one mended our sick bodies, as the other did our clothes." But I will urge these cavilling and contumelious arguments no farther, lest some physician should mistake me, and deny me physic when I am sick: for my part, I am well persuaded of physic: I can distinguish ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... within the space of 150 years the art had passed through every technical stage; from the tinted profile system of Polygnotus to the proper pictorial system of natural scenes, composed with natural backgrounds; and Peiraiikos is named as an artist of genre—a painter of barbers and cobblers, booths, asses, ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... rode back to Kenilworth. Guy of Warwick remained all the time in his castle. He had already taken his share in the cruel act of treachery. It was, however, important that Lancaster should take the responsibility for the deed. Four cobblers of Warwick piously bore the headless corpse within their town. But the grim earl sent it back, because it was not found on his fee. At last some Oxford Dominicans took charge of the body and deposited it temporarily in their convent, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... the combination of the thirty gentlemen who were generating smoke with all the ardour of lime-kilns or young volcanoes, and filling Mr. Smalls' small room with an atmosphere that was of the smoke, smoky. Smoke produces thirst; and the cup, punch, egg-flip, sherry-cobblers, and other liquids, which had been so liberally provided, were being consumed by the members of the party as though it had been their drink from childhood; while the conversation was of a kind very different to what our hero had anticipated, being ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... always procurable, another necessary was a huge cotton umbrella of Eastern make, brightly yellow, suggesting the idea of an overgrown marigold. I had also a substantial housewife, the gift of a kind friend: it was a roll of canvas, carefully soiled, and garnished with needles and thread, cobblers' wax, buttons, and other such articles. These things were most useful in lands where tailors abound not; besides which, the sight of a man darning his coat or patching his slippers teems with pleasing ideas of humility. A dagger, a brass inkstand ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... stick to them, and be carried by the eagles to their nests, whence the traders, with loud cries, will scare them. Tarts are made, according to the recipe of the Vizier's son of Bussorah, who turned pastrycook after he was set down in his drawers at the gate of Damascus; cobblers are all Mustaphas, and in the habit of sewing up people cut into four pieces, to whom they are ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens

... respite from hard work. The next morning Alois's arms did not move like unwearying machinery, and, the ten o'clock-dinner being over, we saw him seated at his ease on the adjoining hillside. Should we go and speak to him? He appeared different from the ordinary run of his class (though cobblers are often clever men enough), and moreover of a decidedly friendly turn of mind. We determined that we would. We joined Alois on the stony, waste hillside, crowned by two trees with a crucifix in the centre, which formed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... rare moment of my bright and useful career was when the boss himself called, "Oh, Miss Connie, come mal here, yes?" And when I got mal there he said, "I want you should take my shoes to the cobblers so fort yes?... And be sure you get a check ... and go quick, yes." Whereupon he removed his shoes and shuffled about in a pair ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... and was shot down. Four were military men, of whom one was General Eudes, a draper's assistant, and one had been a private in the army of Africa. Five were genuine working-men, three of whom were fierce, ignorant cobblers from Belleville; the other two were Assy, a machinist, and Thiez, a silver-chaser,—one of the few honest men in the Council. Three were not Frenchmen, although generals; namely, Dombrowski, La Cecilia, and Dacosta, besides Cluseret, who claimed American citizenship. ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... any man of 'em out I'll stand your second—'pon my soul, I will. They must be cowards, so there isn't much to fear. Confound the fellows, I tell 'em every day I'm the son of a cobbler, and egad, they grow civiller. What do they mean? Are cobblers ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... by about 40 wholesale houses, several doing a great trade, and of retailers and little men there are a dozen gross, not counting cobblers who come with the last. American-made articles were first on sale here in March 1877. Rivetted boots may be said to have originated (in 1840) through the mistake of a local factor's traveller, who booked an order for copper sprigs too extensive ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... gained, and knocking down thrones, the owners themselves supplying the pickaxes and hammers. You will see the two best armies of the Continent running away from their own shadows; the old councillors of Frederick and Maria Theresa baffled by cabinets of cobblers and tinkers; grey-beard generals, covered with orders, hunted over the frontier by boys, girls, and old women; and France, like a poissarde in a passion, with her hair flying about her ears, a knife in her hand, and her tongue in full ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... this questioning of guests won't do. Why, much learning is spoiling you. You remind me of the radical cobblers in the silly old novels, who, according to the authors, were prepared to trample down all good manners in the pursuit of utilitarian knowledge. The fact is, I begin to think that you have so muddled your head with mathematics, and with grubbing into those idiotic old ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... existing system required very important alterations to check its excesses and supply its defects. Numa's reforms were all in favour of the people, whom he classified into a mixed and motley multitude of goldsmiths and musicians and cobblers; while the constitution introduced by Lykurgus was severely aristocratic, driving all handicrafts into the hands of slaves and foreigners, and confining the citizens to the use of the spear and shield, as men whose trade was war alone, and who knew nothing but how to obey their ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... not stop. To most of the people gathered there, what takes place is no more than a common execution. Many of them are attending to it as to a tedious duty. Others work away at some menial task more or less connected with the Crucifixion, as unconcerned as cobblers humming over their last. Most of the people in the huge canvas are represented, as no doubt they were in life, without much personal feeling about Christ. His own friends are painted with all their grief and despair, but the others are allowed to feel as they please. The ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson

... dear sir, get into a passion?—Take things coolly. As the poet has observed, "Those only is gentlemen who behave as sich;" with such, then, consort, be they cobblers or dukes. Don't give us, cries the patriotic reader, any abuse of our fellow-countrymen (anybody else can do that), but rather continue in that good-humored, facetious, descriptive style with which your letter has commenced.—Your remark, sir, is perfectly just, and does honor to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... caste and headship with the generations to follow, and a total displacing of them in history by certain notorious, frowzy, scrubby pamphleteers and publishers, Lord Ormont thought amazingly comical. English nobles heading the weavers, cobblers, and barbers of England! He laughed, but he said, 'Charlotte would listen ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... and cobblers are cast in the same mould. . . . The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbour causes ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... butresses and projections of the old Cathedral upon the other. To give some gaiety to this sombre passage (well known by the name of the Krames), a number of little booths, or shops, after the fashion of cobblers' stalls, are plastered, as it were, against the Gothic projections and abutments, so that it seemed as if the traders had occupied with nests, bearing the same proportion to the building, every buttress and coign of ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... much to do with a man's fitness to be a bishop or a rabbi. But they have no more to do with his fitness to be a magistrate, a legislator, or a minister of finance, than with his fitness to be a cobbler. Nobody has ever thought of compelling cobblers to make any declaration on the true faith of a Christian. Any man would rather have his shoes mended by a heretical cobbler than by a person who had subscribed all the thirty-nine articles, but had never handled an awl. Men act thus, not because they are indifferent to religion, but ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... all; the only one which, in a true, high sense, was of importance at all; and for the sake of which, little as it then appeared to be so, the whole work was to be done—composed at that time merely of poor men, poor cobblers, weavers, carpenters, trade apprentices, and humble artisans, men of low birth and low estate, who might be seen at night stealing along the lanes and alleys of London, carrying with them some precious load ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... time you expect a field-day in your town, a day when Dukes, Earls, and Knights pay their court to weavers, tailors, and cobblers, I should like to know of it two or three days beforehand. It is not that I care three skips of a cur dog for the politics, but I should like to see such an exhibition of human nature. If you meet with that worthy old veteran in religion and good-fellowship, Mr. Jeffrey, or any ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... sort of hotel on Sacramento Street below Kearney. The neighbourhood was low—just on the edge of the Barbary Coast, abounding in stores for second-hand clothing, saloons, pawnshops, gun-stores, bird-stores, and the shops of Chinese cobblers. Around the corner on Kearney Street was a concert hall, a dive, to which the admission was free. Near ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... "Cobblers' wax!" she explained airily. "Brought some with me, in case of emergency. It's useful stuff. And I just looted Linda Mottram's curling apparatus from her bedroom. Don't you twig? What blind bats you are! I'm going to stick ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... slingers with shovels. They will advance by squads in front of the waggons so that if there is any road-making to be done you may set to work at once, and in case of need I may know where to get the men I want. [37] I mean also to take a corps of smiths, carpenters, and cobblers, men of military age, provided with the proper tools, to supply any possible need. These men will not be in the fighting-line, but they will have a place assigned to them where they can be hired by any one who likes. [38] If ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... seven-storied, yellow-washed hovels, or call them palaces, where all that is dreary in domestic life seems magnified and multiplied; those staircases which ascend from a ground floor of cook shops and cobblers' stalls, stables and regiments of cavalry, to a middle region of princes, cardinals, and ambassadors, and an upper tier of artists just beneath the unattainable sky: ... in which the visitor becomes sick at heart of Italian ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... wrote to a friend: "The confounding of all ranks and making a jest of order has long been growing in England; and I perceive by the books you sent me, has made a very considerable progress. The heroes and heroines of the age are cobblers and kitchen wenches. Perhaps you will say, I should not take my ideas of the manners of the times from such trifling authors; but it is more truly to be found among them, than from any historian; as they write ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... so farther on, the white-jacket reappeared and, gliding by all others to reach his captain, said, with mincing feet and a semicircular bow, while presenting a tray of six, not seven, sherry cobblers: ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... poor Pike no peaceful thought, no calm absorption of high mind into the world of flies, no placid period of cobblers' wax, floss-silk, turned hackles, and dubbing. For in making of flies John Pike had his special moments of inspiration, times of clearer insight into the everlasting verities, times of brighter conception and more subtle execution, ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... chocolate cream, biscuit glace, peach ice, vanilla ice, orange-water ice, brandy peaches, preserved strawberries and pines; not to say a word of towers of candy, bonbons, kisses, champagne, Rhine wine, sparkling Catawba, liquors, and a man in the corner making sherry cobblers of wondrous flavour, under the especial supervision of Kinch; on the whole, it was an American supper, got up regardless of expense—and whoever has been to such an entertainment knows very well what an American ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... years ago, a stall at Watley, which, according to the traditions of the place, had been hereditary in his family for several generations. He may also be said to have flourished there, after the manner of cobblers; for this, it must be remembered, was in the good old times, before the gutta-percha revolution had carried ruin and dismay into the stalls—those of cobblers—which in considerable numbers existed throughout ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren



Words linked to "Cobblers" :   United Kingdom, testis, Britain, nonsense, ballock, testicle, orchis, Great Britain, bunk, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, hokum, U.K., meaninglessness, nut, ball, egg, bollock, nonsensicality, UK



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