Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

cobbler

UK /ˈkɒblə/ · US /ˈkɑblɚ/ noun

Forms cobblers cobler

  1. noun A person who repairs, and sometimes makes, shoes.
  2. noun (Australia, New Zealand, agriculture, slang) A sheep left to the end to be sheared (for example, because its wool is filthy, or because it is difficult to catch).
  3. noun (obsolete) A person who cobbles (“to assemble or mend in an improvised or rough way”); a clumsy workman.
  4. noun (US, alcoholic beverages) An (iced) alcoholic drink containing spirit or wine, with lemon juice and sugar.
  5. noun A roadworker who lays cobbles.
  6. noun The shiny, hard seed of the horse chestnut tree (Aesculus hippocastanum), especially when used in the game of the same name (sense 1.2); a conker, a horse chestnut.
  7. noun (games) Synonym of conkers (“a game for two players in which the participants each have a horse-chestnut (known as a cobbler (sense 1.1) or conker) suspended from a length of string, and take turns to strike their opponent's conker with their own with the object of destroying the opponent's conker before their own is destroyed”).
  8. noun The South Australian catfish (Cnidoglanis macrocephalus), a species of catfish native to Australia which has dorsal and pectoral fins bearing sharp, venomous spines.
  9. noun The soldier or South Australian cobbler (Gymnapistes marmoratus), a brown fish native to southern Australian estuaries which is not closely related to Cnidoglanis macrocephalus, but also has venemous spines on its dorsal and pectoral fins.
  10. noun Also river cobbler: basa (Pangasius bocourti), an edible species of shark catfish native to the Chao Phraya and Mekong river basins in Southeast Asia.
  11. noun Pangas catfish (Pangasius pangasius), an edible species of shark catfish native to Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, and Pakistan.
  12. noun (US) Condica sutor, an owlet moth native to North America.
  13. noun (usually in the plural, slang) A police officer. “Look out: it’s the cobblers!”
  14. noun (US) Often preceded by a descriptive word as in apple cobbler, peach cobbler, etc.: a kind of pie, usually filled with fruit, originally having a crust at the base but nowadays generally lacking this and instead topped with a thick, cake-like pastry layer.
  15. noun (Cockney rhyming slang, chiefly in the plural) A testicle.
  16. noun A person from Northamptonshire (traditionally a centre for shoemaking)

Synonyms

botcher chuckler lad of wax shoemender souter waxie waxy conkers 5-O alphabet barney beatsman bizzie bluebottle bluecoat blue heeler blue meanie bobby body snatcher bogey shoemaker deep-dish pie

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English cobeler, cobelere (“mender of shoes, cobbler”) [and other forms]; further origin unknown. The word appears to be derived from an early form of cobble (“to mend roughly, patch; (specifically) to mend shoes, especially roughly”) + -er (suffix forming agent nouns), but is attested much earlier than the verb which suggests that the verb may be a back-formation from cobbler.
Sense 2 (“sheep left to the end to be sheared”) is a pun on cobbler’s last (“tool for shaping or preserving the shape of shoes”); while sense 3 (“clumsy workman”) is derived from cobble + -er: see above.

Uncertain; it has been suggested that the word derives from cobbler’s punch (“warm drink made of beer with added spirit, sugar, and spices”), or because the drink patches up (“repairs; makes better”) the drinker.

From cobble (“rounded stone used for paving roads, cobblestone”) + -er (occupational suffix). Cobble is from Late Middle English, from cobbe (“head or leader; gangleader; bully (?); male swan, cob; the head; something rounded or in the form of a lump”) + -le, -el (suffix forming diminutives). The further etymology of cobbe is uncertain; it is perhaps a variant of cop (“the top of something (a house, tower, mountain, tree, etc.); crown or top of the head; the head”), from Old English cop, copp (“summit, top; cup, vessel”), from Proto-Germanic *kuppaz (“round object, orb; knoll; hilltop, summit; crown or top of the head; head; skull; bowl; container, vessel”), from Proto-Indo-European *gup- (“round object; knoll”), from *gew- (“to bend, curve; an arch, vault”). However, this is doubted by the Oxford English Dictionary.

Probably a variant of or related to cob, cobb (“stony fruit kernel; nut used in the game of conkers, conker; game of conkers”), perhaps from Middle English cobbe (“head or leader; gangleader; bully (?); male swan, cob; the head; something rounded or in the form of a lump”): see further at etymology 3.

Webster’s 1913

  1. noun A mender of shoes. Addison.
  2. noun A clumsy workman. Shak.

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “cobbler”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details