Also 7 squob, 8 squabb. [Cf. prec.]
1. Of persons: Short and stout; squat and plump.
1675. Wycherley, Country Wife, IV. iii. I am now no more interruption to ’em … than a little squab French page who speaks no English.
1682. T. Flatman, Heraclitus Ridens (1713), II. 234. Do you know that same Squab Blade with the light Peruke?
1703. Farquhar, Inconstant, I. ii. A Dutch woman is squab.
1760. Goldsm., Cit. W., lxviii. As Rock is remarkably squab, his great rival, Franks, is remarkably tall.
1827. T. Hamilton, Cyril Thornton (1845), 47. His lordship was a little squab man.
1865. Reader, No. 122. 489/2. The squab yellow Hottentots.
1884. Besant, Dorothy Forster, i. His eyes were large, his figure short and squab.
b. Having a thick clumsy form.
1723. Chambers, trans. Le Clerc’s Archit., I. 46. The Capital … wou’d be too flat and squab.
1818. Scott, Hrt. Midl., xliv. Turning his squab nose up in the air.
1885. Clark Russell, Straige Voy., v. A large three-masted ironclad, with low squab funnel.
1894. Idler, Sept., 134. That ancient ship … with her … artillery running the fat squab length of her.
c. Comb., as squab-faced, -looking, -shaped adjs.
1781. Mme. D’Arblay, Diary, May. The Attorney-General, a most squat and squab-looking man.
1795. Southey, Lett. from Spain (1799), 9. Its fountain ornamented with a squab-faced figure of Fame.
1865. Alex. Smith, Summer in Skye, ii. Comical squab-faced deities in silver and bronze.
1889. C. Edwardes, Sardinia & the Sardes, 103. Mostly its buildings are low, squab-shaped, and of sun-dried brick.
2. Young and undeveloped; esp. of young birds, unfledged or not fully fledged, newly or lately hatched.
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), A Squab Rabbet or Chick, one so young that ’tis scarce fit to be eaten.
1709. Brit. Apollo, No. 46. 3/1. A Glazier … Came like a Squab-Rook flutt’ring down.
1774. G. White, Selborne, lxi. I … found in each nest only two squab, naked pulli. Ibid. (1789). The squab young we brought down and placed on the grass-plot.
1807–8. W. Irving, Salmag. (1824), 269. A nest-full of little squab Cupids.
† 3. Reserved, quiet. Obs.–1
1689. N. Lee, Princ. Cleve, III. i. Your demure Ladies that are so Squob in company, are Divels in a corner.
† 4. Abrupt, blunt, curt. Obs.
1737. Hervey, Mem., II. 340. Most people blamed the Duke of Argyll for so squab an attack.
a. 1743. Savage, An Author to be let, ¶ 8. Thus have I caused his Enemies … to libel him for my squab compliment.
1756. H. Walpole, Lett. H. Mann (1833), III. 125. We have returned a squab answer, retorting the infraction of treaties. Ibid. (1759), 338. Lord Ligonier in words was more squab. ‘If he wanted a court-martial, he might go seek it in Germany.’
