1776 W. Tans'ur Beauties of Poetry 150 Nub, a Nubble, or a Bruise with fighting.

a1800 S. Pegge Anecd. Eng. Lang. (1814) 391 Nubbles, tanners' bark when cut small.

1818 J. Brown Psyche 171 Counting the nubbles and the dints That form the cornice.

1860 G. W. S. Piesse Lab. Chem. Wonders 42 A nubble of iron..dissolves in it like sugar does in water.

1897 R. Kipling Captains Courageous 14 A piece of dingy ticking full of lumps and nubbles.

1962 J. Updike Pigeon Feathers 189 She had on a kind of dirty-pink..bathing suit with a little nubble all over it.

a1990 M. Kumin Sel. Poems 1960–90 (1997) 46 She tears at her belly fur, shredding it fine as onion skin, biting the blind and voiceless nubbles off.

1997 Amer. Poetry Rev. July–Aug. 5 Inside it..a nubble of green moss the texture of a mushroom cap was sprouting.

1776 N.-Amer. & W.-Indian Gazetteer sig. G2/2 The most remarkable capes and points from S. to N. are..Porpus and Nidduk, or Bald-head capes, York Nubbles, Lock's Point..and Sandy Points.

1794 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc. III. 7 At the end of this neck of land, is a small hillock called the Nubble.

1862 J. C. Cremony Let. 22 July in War of Rebellion (U.S. War Dept.) (1897) 1st Ser. L. i. lxii. 134 The first day I..camped at a spot bearing north by west from the highest nubble on the Chiricahua Range.

a1892 J. G. Whittier Bay of Seven Islands in Poet. Wks. (1894) 391 Where the Grand Bank shallows with the wrecks Of sunken fishers, and to whom strange isles..seem Familiar as Great Neck and Kettle Cove, Nubble and Boon, the common names of home.

1900 Field 22 Sept. 487 On a neighbouring nubble, as the fisherman call a greasy islet in a pond, were discovered the nest and nine dark brown eggs of the scaup duck or bluebill (fuligula marila).

1923 A. C. Bent Life Hist. N. Amer. Wild Fowl 52 The first nest I found..was in the center of a little islet, or ‘nubble’ in a small pond hole in the East Point marshes.

1946 S. B. Attwood Length & Breadth Maine 15 Nubble, a rounded hill or small mountain, often a foothill of a mountain.

1970 Yankee June 159 Once past the ‘nubble’ guarded by swift tidal currents, the [Westport] river broadens into a wide channel.

1987 Los Angeles Times (Electronic ed.) 29 Nov. The lowest high point, an unnamed hump in the Florida Panhandle, is just 345 feet above sea level... ‘It's kind of hard to tell which point is the highest, so I just wandered around until I was convinced that I'd stood on every little nubble.’

1673 Æsop Improved i. xxix. 18 The..Peacock..Cufft him to boot, and nubled [Errata: nubbled] well his nose.

1676 in Verney Family Mem. (1899) VII. 223 S^r French [Vincent]..beate him [sc. Lord Pembroke], threw him downe in ye kennell, nubbled him & dawb'd him daintily.

1707 W. Wagstaffe Crispin Cobler's Confut. Ben H—dly (ed. 2) 9 I..told him strange Stories; if his Master went an Hair's Breadth beyond his Duty, he was a Tyrant, that it was lawful for him to Nubble him.

1725 N. Bailey tr. Erasmus All Familiar Colloquies 462 I..took him hold by the Hair with my left Hand, and nubbled him so well-favouredly with my right, that you could see no Eyes he had for the Swellings.

1736 R. Ainsworth Thes. Linguæ Latinæ I. (at cited word) To nubble, Pugnis cædere vel contundere.

1877 O. Rooke Heir to Two Fortunes III. ii. 32 They slapped him on the spine, and nubbled him all over.