Edinburgh.
[This phrase, according to Grose, "originated in the days of good Queen
Bess. When great chimnies were in fashion, there was at each corner of
the hearth, or grate, a small elevated projection, called _hob_, and
behind it a seat. In winter-time the beer was placed on the hob to
warm; and the cold beer was set on a small table, said to have been
called the _nob_: so that the {87} question, Will you have hob or nob?
seems only to have meant, Will you have warm or cold beer? _i.e._ beer
from the hob, or beer from the nob." But Nares, in his _Glossary_, s.v.
_Habbe_ or _Nabbe_, with much greater reason, shows that _hob_ or
_nob_, now only used convivially, to ask a person whether he will have
a glass of wine or not, is most evidently a corruption of the old
_hab-nab_, from the Saxon _habban_, to have, and _nabban_, not to have;
in proof of which, as Nares remarks, Shakspeare has used it to mark an
alternative of another kind:
"And his incensement at this moment is so implacable, that satisfaction
can be none but by pangs of death and sepulchre: _hob, nob_ is his
word; give't or take't."--_Twelfth Night_, Act III. Sc. 4.]
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