Obs. Also 7 stopball, stoball, stob-ball, stobball. [Of obscure origin.
Commonly identified with STOOL-BALL; but the games appear to have been very dissimilar, and the corruption of stool-ball into stoball, stobball seems hardly probable. Possibly the first element may be STOB sb., denoting the club or ‘staff.’]
An outdoor ball-game commonly played in the 16–17 c. (see quots.). Also attrib.
1634. Abp. Laud’s Visit., in 4th Rep. Hist. MSS. Comm., App. 144/1. This whole churchyard is made a receptacle for all ydle persons to spend their time in stopball, and such lyke recreacions.
c. 1640. J. Smyth, Hund. Berkeley (1885), 10. The large and levell playnes … in the vale of this hundred … doe witnes the inbred delight, that both gentry, yeomanry, rascallity, boyes and children, doe take in a game called Stoball…. And not a sonne of mine, but at 7. was furnished with his double stoball staves, and a gamster therafter.
1679. Locke, in Ld. King, Life (1830), I. 248. The sports of England, which, perhaps, a curious stranger would be glad to see, are … shooting in the long-bow and stob-ball, in Tothill Fields.
a. 1686. Aubrey, Nat. Hist. Wilts (1847), 117. Stobball-play is peculiar to North Wilts, North Gloucestershire, and a little part of Somerset near Bath. They smite a ball, stuffed very hard with quills and covered with soale leather, with a staffe, commonly made of withy, about 3 [feet] and a halfe long…. A stobball-ball is of about four inches diameter, and as hard as a stone.
1694. E. Chamberlayne, Pres. St. Eng., III. vii. 463. The Citizens and Peasants have … Skittles or Nine-pins, Shovel-board, Stow-ball, Goffe, [etc.].
1801. Strutt, Sports & Past., II. iii. 82. A pastime called Stow-ball is frequently mentioned by the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which, I presume, was a species of goff, at least it appears to have been played with the same kind of ball.
1907. F. W. Hackwood, Old Eng. Sports, 144. In the English modification of Goff, the club employed was not unlike the bandy-stick….
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries this game was also known as Stow-ball.
b. A ball used in this game.
1678. Littleton, Lat.-Eng. Dict., Paganica,… a goff-ball, a stow-ball, stuffed with feathers.
