cobbler

Meaning

Noun

• A person who repairs, and sometimes makes, shoes.
• A sheep left to the end to be sheared (for example, because its wool is filthy, or because it is difficult to catch).
• A person who cobble; a clumsy workman.
• An alcoholic drink containing spirit or wine, with lemon juice and sugar.
• A roadworker who lays cobbles.
• A police officer.
• Often preceded by a descriptive word as in apple cobbler, peach cobbler, etc.: a kind of pie, usually filled with fruit, originally having a crust at the base but nowadays generally lacking this and instead topped with a thick, cake-like pastry layer.

Origin

• , but is attested much earlier than the verb which suggests that the verb may be a back-formation from cobbler.
• Sense 2 (“sheep left to the end to be sheared”) is a pun on cobbler’s last; while sense 3 (“clumsy workman”) is derived from cobble + -er: see above.
• Unknown; it has been suggested that the word derives from cobbler's punch, or because the drink patch up the drinker.
• . The further etymology of cobbe is uncertain; it is perhaps a variant of cop, from Old English cop, copp, from Proto-Germanic *kuppaz, from Proto-Indo-European *gup-, from *gew-. However, this is doubted by the Oxford English Dictionary.
• Probably a variant of or related to cob, cobb, perhaps from Middle English cobbe: see further at etymology 3.
• Unknown.