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jab

nounverbattested in dialogue

  • //d͡ʒæb//

A quick stab or blow; a poking or thrusting motion.

noun

  1. 1

    A quick stab or blow; a poking or thrusting motion.

    He tore in for the ball, make a running jab for it and held it.

  2. 2

    A short straight punch.

    American Ward was too quick and too slick for his British rival, landing at will with razor sharp jabs and hooks and even bullying Froch at times.

  3. 3

    A medical hypodermic injection (vaccination or inoculation).

    Our dog was exposed to rabies, so the whole family went to a clinic to get our jabs.

  4. 4

    A vaccination, whether or not delivered by means of a conventional injection.

    A 'painless' sticking plaster flu jab that delivers vaccine into the skin has passed important safety tests in the first trial in people.

  5. 5

    figurativeA mild verbal insult.

Etymology

Originally a Scottish (unclear if Scots or Scottish English) form of English job (“peck, poke, thrust”), from Middle English jobben.

verb

  1. 1

    To poke or thrust abruptly, or to make such a motion.

    A barely audible groan welled up in the Captain's throat as the grinning Freedom Fighter circled around behind the helpless American Soldier. The groan sputtered into a strangled, "No… no… don't.... " as Randall felt the juicy tip of the man's tumescent cock jab against his hair-ringed, virgin asshole.

  2. 2

    To deliver a quick punch.

  3. 3

    slangTo give someone an injection.

  4. 4

    slangTo vaccinate or inoculate someone.

  5. 5

    To make fun of, to mock.

    While the book's lasting appeal is remarkable, the work is worth little scholarly attention insofar as Twain is merely jabbing at a long-dead set of social practices.

Forms

plural
jabs
past tense
jabbed
past participle
jabbed
present participle
jabbing
third person singular
jabs
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).