1866. Mansfield, School Life, 190. On the west side of School
court, a spacious room, nicknamed Moab, has been erected, with
numerous marble basins, and an unlimited supply of fresh water.
Moabite, subs. (old).—A bailiff; a philistine (q.v.).—Grose (1785).
1811. Lex. Bal., s.v.
1859. Matsell, Vocabulum, s.v. Moabite, a constable.
Mob, subs. (old: now recognised).—1. The populace; the crowd. [A
contraction of mobile vulgus]. Also mobility and mobocracy.
1686. Durfey, Common. of Women, ‘Dedication.’ The mobile being all
poison’d with the pernitious Tenets of a misled, ungrateful
Usurper.
1688. Shadwell, Sq. of Alsatia I, in Wks. (1720), iv. 15. This
morning your cloaths and liveries will come home, and thou shalt
appear rich and splendid like thy self, and the mobile shall
worship thee.
1690. Dryden, Don Sebastian, iv. 1. She singled you out with her
eyes, as commander-in-chief of the mobility.
1694. Country Conversations [Notes and Queries, 7 S. vi. 126]. ‘I
cannot approve of the word mob, in these verses, which though
significant enough, yet is a word but of Late Use, and not
sufficiently Naturalized to appear in a serious Poem: Besides I
esteem it a kind of Burlesque word and unsuitable to the Dignity of
Horace.’
1702. Mrs. Centlivre, Beau’s Duel, ii. x. If so, you’ll have both
the mob and the law on your side.
1703. Ward, London Spy, pt. vi. p. 140. The House was surrounded
with the mobility, that it look’d like the Welsh-Cow-keepers-camp,
consisting of a number of both Sexes, of all sorts and sizes.
1711. Spectator, No. 135. It is perhaps this humour of speaking no
more words than we needs must which has so miserably curtailed some
of our words, that in familiar writings and conversation they often
lose all but their first syllables, as in mob., red., pos., incog.,
and the like.
1719. Durfey, Pills to Purge, v. 308. Damsel with squire, and mob
in the Mire.
1740. North, Examen, p. 574. I may note that the rabble first
changed their title, and were called the mob, in the assemblies of
this club (the Green Ribbon club 1680–82), first mobile vulgus,
then contracted in one syllable.
1755. Johnson, Eng. Dict. [1815], s.v. Mobility.... In cant
language, the populace.
1780. Lee, Chapter of Accidents, ii. 1. Brid. I don’t love to go
much among the mobility, neither.
1785. Grose, Vulgar Tongue, s.v.
1811. Lex. Bal., s.v.
1822. Scott, Fortunes of Nigel, ix. The court-yard for the
mobility, and the apartments for the nobility.
1859. Matsell, Vocabulum, s.v.
1878. Green, Short Hist. Eng. People, ch. x. § 1. p. 729. When mobs
were roaring themselves hoarse for ‘Wilkes and liberty.’