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Added 1 October 2026

glob

/ɡlɑb/ noun

Categories: SocietyRare Words

noun Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). Pronunciation from Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org. More about glob at Wordnik → Where our words come from →

  1. A round, shapeless or amorphous lump, as of a semisolid substance.
    He put a glob of paint into the cup and went on painting.
  2. A millimeter-sized colour module found beyond the visual area V2 in the brain's parvocellular pathway.

verb

  1. To stick in globs or lumps.

noun

  1. A limited pattern matching technique using wildcards, less powerful than a regular expression; such a pattern.

verb

  1. To carry out pattern matching using a glob.

Origin

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.

From Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org (CC BY-SA)

Related Words: lumpclumpclodballchunkdollopmassglobosityglopglobulusglobuleglobus

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