In 5 cobill, -ylle. [In earliest use cobill nut: cf. COBBLE sb.1, COB sb.1]
1. A large nut of stout short ovate shape, borne by a cultivated variety of the hazel; also the tree. Also attrib., as in cob-nut bush.
[c. 1440. York Myst., xv. 112. Two cobill notis vppon a bande, Loo! litill babe, what I haue broght.
1483. Cath. Angl., 69. A Cobylle nutt, moracia.
a. 1500. Medulla Gram., Moracia, hard notys long kepte.]
1580. Baret, Alv., C 714. A Cobnutte, or walnutte, Caria basilica, Vne noix grande.
1617. Minsheu, Duct. Ling., Cobnut, Belg. kop-not, nux capitalis, a great nut, such as boyes play at Cobnut withall.
1859. W. S. Coleman, Woodlands (1866), 159. The filberts and cob-nuts of our gardens are supposed to be merely varieties originating in the common Hazel.
1866. Treas. Bot., 337. Short roundish nuts with a strong thick shell are called Cob nuts.
1889. G. S. Boulger, Uses of Plants, 58. The Hazelnut…. Its varieties, the Filberts … and the Cob-nuts (vars. grandis, glomerata, crispa) are largely grown in Mid Kent.
b. Applied to foreign nuts; esp. Jamaica Cobnut, the seed of Omphalea diandra; also the tree.
1624. Ford, Sun’s Darling, III. ii. I sweat like a pamper’d jade of Asia, and drop like a cobnut of Africa.
1866. Treas. Bot., 812. O. diandra is cultivated in St. Domingo and Jamaica, under the name of Noisettier or Cobnut, from the resemblance of the flavour of the seeds to that of the European nut.
2. A game played by children with nuts.
c. 1440. [cf. 1].
1532. More, Confut. Tindale, Wks. 574/2. Some suche prety playes … as cheristone, mary bone, bokle pit, spurne poynte, cobbe nutte, or quayting.
1594. Mirr. Policy (1599), 186. Augustus so farre abased the imperiall grauity, as to play with little children at cobnut.
1685. Cotton, trans. Montaigne, III. 92. What if I have a Mind to play at Cob-nut, or to whip a Top?
1733. Bailey, Colloq. Erasm. (1877), 56. They that are fit to play at cob-nut are fit to ride upon a hobby-horse.
1847–78. Halliwell, Cob-nut, a game which consists in pitching at a row of nuts piled up in heaps of four, three at the bottom and one at the top of each heap. All the nuts knocked down are the property of the pitcher. The nut used for pitching is called the cob. It is sometimes played on the top of a hat with two nuts, when one tries to break the nut of the other with his own, or with two rows of hazel nuts strung on strings through holes bored in the middle.
1885. T. Mozley, Remin. Towns, etc. I. 402–3. I must not forget the ‘cob-nuts’ or ‘hob-nuts.’… The boys perforated hazel-nuts, ran strings through them, and then battered them against one another, continually renewing the combat with the survivors.
