Standard Lemma guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.
noun
A round, shapeless or amorphous lump, as of a semisolid substance.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
A millimeter-sized colour module found beyond the visual area V2 in the brain's parvocellular pathway.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Topics: biology, natural-sciences
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
A limited pattern matching technique using wildcards, less powerful than a regular expression; such a pattern.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Topics: computing, engineering, mathematics, natural-sciences, physical-sciences, programming, sciences
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
verb
To stick in globs or lumps.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
verb
To carry out pattern matching using a glob.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Topics: computing, engineering, mathematics, natural-sciences, physical-sciences, programming, sciences
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
a compact mass
Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0
Synonyms: ball, clod, lump, clump, chunk
Antonyms: none provided
Broader terms: agglomeration
Narrower terms: clot, coagulum, gob, clew
History
Possibly a blend of blob + gob, or a clipping of globule. An element of sound symbolism is clearly involved: compare such phonetically and semantically similar words as glop, gop, lob, blob, lump, clump and clod. (Still, globe, clump and clod may be related via the Proto-Indo-European root *gel-; compare clew.) In the biological sense, proposed by Bevil R. Conway and Doris Y. Tsao, by analogy with the cytochrome-oxidase "blobs" of V1, an earlier stage in the hierarchical elaboration of colour.
Originates from the early (c. 1970) Unix command glob; clipping of global.
Across languages
3 source translations are retained for this English entry.
