1849. Punch, Fortune-Tellers’ Almanack. To dream that you are lame is a token that you will get into a hobble.
1892. Milliken, ’Arry Ballads, p. 44. I got into a ’obble.
Verb (venery).—See quot.
1688. Sempill, ‘Crissell Sandilands’ in Bannatyne MSS. (Hunterian Club, 1879–88), p. 354, lines 21–2. Had scho bene undir, and he hobland above, That were a perellous play for to suspect them.
Hobbledehoy, subs. (old, now colloquial).—A growing gawk: as in the folk-rhyme, ‘Hobbledehoy, neither man nor boy.’ [For derivation, see Notes and Queries, 1 S., v., 468, vii., 572; 4 S., ii., 297, viii., 451, ix., 147; 7 S., iv., 523, and v., 58.]
1557. Tusser, Husbandrie, ch. 60, st 3, p. 138 (E. D. S.). The first seuen yeers bring vp as a childe, The next to learning, for waxing too wilde. The next keepe vnder sir hobbard de hoy, The next a man no longer a boy.
1738. Swift, Polite Convers., Dial 1. Why, he is a mere hobbledehoy, neither a man nor a boy.
1785. Grose, Vulg. Tongue, s.v.
1837. Barham, Ingoldsby Legends, ‘Aunt Fanny.’ At the epoch I speak about, I was between a man and a boy, A hobble-de-hoy, A fat, little, punchy concern of sixteen.
1848. Thackeray, Vanity Fair, ch. iv. He remembered perfectly well being thrashed by Joseph Sedley, when the latter was a big, swaggering, hobbadyhoy, and George an impudent urchin of ten years old.