kibble

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɪbəl/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪbəl

Unknown; verb sense c. 1790,^[1] Shropshire dialect,^[2] perhaps variant of chip^[3] or derived from Etymology 2 below.

kibble (third-person singular simple present kibbles, present participle kibbling, simple past and past participle kibbled)

1. To grind coarsely.

   kibbled oats

kibble (countable and uncountable, plural kibbles)

1. Something that has been kibbled, especially grain for use as animal feed.
   • 2022 January 6, Elisabetta Povoledo, “Pope Scolds Couples Who Choose Pets Over Kids”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

     The pope had already signaled his kids-over-kibbles stance in a 2014 interview with the Rome daily Il Messaggero. When asked whether some in society valued pets more than children, he said that it was a reality that reflected a “sign of cultural degeneration.”

2. Any artificial animal feed in pellet form.

From German Kübel (“pail”), from Middle High German kübel, kubel (“bucket, bushel, measure of grain”), from Old High German kubil (“tub, bucket”), from Proto-West Germanic *kubil, from Proto-Germanic *kub- (“to be vaulted, arch”), from Proto-Indo-European *gew-, *gū- (“to bend, curve, arch, vault”).

Alternatively, possibly from Vulgar Latin *cupia, from Latin cūpa.^[4]

kibble (plural kibbles)

1. An iron bucket used in mines for hoisting anything to the surface.

kibble (plural kibbles)

1. (historical) A mallet used in the game of trap ball.

Possibly from kibble (“animal feed”).

kibble (uncountable)

1. (fandom slang) In the Transformers fandom, pieces of a toy or figure necessary for one mode, but appearing out of place or unnecessary in the other.

• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “kibble”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.