glob

Meaning

Noun

1. A round, shapeless or amorphous lump, as of a semisolid substance.
2. A millimeter-sized colour module found beyond the visual area V2 in the brain's parvocellular pathway.

Verb

To stick in globs or lumps.

Verb

To carry out pattern matching using a glob.

Synonyms

clod

chunk

ball

clump

lump

blob

nugget

drip

drop

raindrop

clot

Translations

zolla

goccia densa

damla

boule

tros

bocí

كُرة

Batzen

terròs

όγκος

σταγόνα

bloc

Tropfen

globule

Klumpen

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ɡlɑb/

Etymology

Possibly a blend of blob + gob or a clipping of globule. An element of sound symbolism is clearly involved: compare such phonetically and semantically similar words as glop, gop, blob, clump and clod. (Still, globe, clump and clod may be related via the Proto-Indo-European root *gel-; compare clew.)
In the biological sense, proposed by Bevil R. Conway and Doris Y. Tsao, by analogy with the cytochrome-oxidase "blobs" of V1, an earlier stage in the hierarchical elaboration of colour.