Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To associate familiarly.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Take or not take: a familiar invitation to drinking.
  • At random; come what will.
  • Also written hob-a-nob, hob-and-nob, hob-or-nob.
  • To drink together; hence, to talk familiarly or socially. Also hob-a-nob, hob-and-nob, hob-or-nob.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To drink familiarly (with another).
  • intransitive verb To associate familiarly; to be on intimate terms.
  • noun Familiar, social intercourse.
  • adverb Have or have not; -- a familiar invitation to reciprocal drinking.
  • adverb At random; hit or miss. (Obs.)

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun An informal chat.
  • verb To associate in a friendly manner, often with those of a higher class or status.
  • verb To drink together.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb rub elbows with

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Earlier hob-or-nob, hob-nob, to toast or drink to each other alternately, drink together, from hob or nob, hob a nob, hob nob, give or take, hit or miss, however it may turn out (spoken as a toast when clinking glasses), alteration of obsolete and dialectal hab nab (perhaps originally meaning “have or have not”) : probably Middle English habbe, singular present subjunctive of Middle English haven, habben, to have; see have + Middle English nabbe, have not, singular present subjunctive of nabben, not to have (from Old English nabban : ne, not; see ne in Indo-European roots + habban, to have; see have).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

(1595–1605) From Old English habban ("have") and nabban ("not have"), thus “have or have not”.

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Examples

Comments

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  • socialize

    December 23, 2007

  • "Hobnobbing with our social betters can be a hit-or-miss proposition, a fact that has an etymological justification. The verb hobnob originally meant “to drink together�? and occurred as a varying phrase, hob or nob, hob-a-nob, or hob and nob, the first of which is recorded in 1763. This phrasal form reflects the origins of the verb in similar phrases that were used when two people toasted each other. The phrases were probably so used because hob is a variant of hab and nob of nab, which are probably forms of have and its negative. In Middle English, for example, one finds the forms habbe, “to have,�? and nabbe, “not to have.�? Hab or nab, or simply hab nab, thus meant “get or lose, hit or miss,�? and the variant hob-nob also meant “hit or miss.�? Used in the drinking phrase, hob or nob probably meant “give or take�?; from a drinking situation hob nob spread to other forms of chumminess."

    http://www.answers.com/topic/hobnob

    March 7, 2008

  • Also a delicious biscuit; an especially delicious biscuit, come to that, and, dare I say it, King of biscuits.

    August 21, 2008

  • Overrated.

    August 21, 2008

  • Disagree.

    Strongly.

    August 24, 2008

  • Opening the bag, she drew out a biscuit, which was heavier than any biscuit she'd ever held. She tried a bit of it and found it too hard. She had to dip it in her coffee to chew it at all.

    Malcolm brazenly looked inside the tent. "Sorry about the hobnob," he said. "But it's all I've got."

    "What's a hobnob?"

    "Biscuit made out of oats. Took them from a horse bucket I found over yonder."

    Elsie put down the hobnob but finished the coffee.

    Homer Hickam, Carrying Albert Home (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), p. 79

    June 29, 2020