wimble

From Middle English wymble, wymbel. Compare Middle Dutch wimmel, Middle Low German wimel, wemel.

wimble (plural wimbles)

1. Any of various hand tools for boring holes.

From Middle English wimblen, from the noun (above). Compare Middle Low German wemelen.

wimble (third-person singular simple present wimbles, present participle wimbling, simple past and past participle wimbled)

1. (transitive) To truss hay with a wimble.
   • 1874, Thomas Hardy, chapter 10, in Far from the Madding Crowd‎:

     “What have you been doing?”
     “Tending thrashing-machine and wimbling haybonds, and saying ‘Hoosh!’ to the cocks and hens when they go upon your seeds, and planting Early Flourballs and Thompson’s Wonderfuls with a dibble.”

2. To bore or pierce, as with a wimble.
   • 1692, Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, London: Lackington et al., 1820, Volume 4, p. 39,

     […] a foot soldier had hid himself […] and being greedy of prey, crept into the vault, and cut so much of the velvet pall that covered the great body, as he judged would hardly be missed, and wimbled also a hole thro’ the said coffin that was largest […]

   • 2001, Richard Flanagan, “The Freshwater Crayfish”, in Gould’s Book of Fish‎, New York: Grove, IV, p. 343:

     My body heavier & heavier, my head a stone, & within an insistent voice wimbling away […]

• auger
• gimlet

Related to whim.

wimble (comparative more wimble, superlative most wimble)

1. (obsolete) active; nimble
   • 1579, Edmund Spenser, “March, Aegloga Tertia”, in The Shepheardes Calender‎, London: Hugh Singleton, page 9b:

     He was so wimble, and so wight,
     From bough to bough he lepped light,

   • 1579, Edward Hake, Newes out of Powles Churchyarde, London: John Charlewood and Richard Jhones, “The first Satyr,”

     And casting backe mine eye, I spyde

     a pretie wymble lad,

     Who saluing of his mate, dyd aske

     what newes were to be had.

   • 1602, John Marston, Antonio and Mellida‎, London: Mathewe Lownes and Thomas Fisher, act III:

     Be not affright, sweete Prince; appease thy feare,
     Buckle thy spirits up, put all thy wits
     In wimble action, or thou art surpriz’d.

   • 1614, John Davies, The Shepheards Pipe, London: George Norton, “An Eclogue between yong Willy the singer of his natiue Pastorals, and old WERNOCKE his friend,”

     Then nought can be atchieu’d with witty shewes,

     Sith griefe of Elde accloyen wimble wit;

   • 1755, Moses Mendez, “The Squire of Dames” Canto 1, Stanza 27, in Robert Dodsley (editor), A Collection of Poems in Four Volumes, London: R. & J. Dodsley, Volume 4, p. 135,

     Man throws the wimble bait, and greedy woman bites.

• lick-wimble

From Middle English wymble.

• IPA^(key): /ˈwɪmbl/

wimble

1. collar-beam

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 78