jib

noun

1. A first-year student at the University of Dublin.

   “Forgetting that the jibs, whom they insulted, were afterwards to grow into the influential men […]”

   “[I]n a healthy environment, young Mahoney might have taken the risk, both with University and, in part, with entering the Aula for the jibs dance.”

verb

Etymology: Uncertain, perhaps related to jib (“shift or swing around”) (see above).

1. To stop and refuse to go forward (usually of a horse).

   ““Who calls, who calls?” cried Essper; a shout was the only answer. There was no path, but the underwood was low, and Vivian took his horse, an old forester, across it with ease. Essper’s jibbed.”

   “Then he got fever, and had to be carried in a hammock slung under a pole. As he weighed sixteen stone I had no end of rows with the carriers. They jibbed, ran away, sneaked off with their loads in the night—quite a mutiny.”

2. To express reluctance; to balk.

   ““What say you to the young lady herself?” said Craigengelt; “the finest young woman in all Scotland, one that you used to be so fond of when she was cross, and now she consents to have you, and gives up her engagement with Ravenswood, you are for jibbing. I must say, the devil’s in ye, when ye neither know what you would have nor what you would want.””

   “I hadn't much chance of buying a practice or dropping into a partnership worth having and I jibbed at setting up in some God-forsaken backwater and slipping into middle age 'building up a connection.'”