Mob

Swift informs us, in his Art of Polite Conversation , that MOB was, in his time, the slang abbreviation of “mobility,” just as NOB is of “nobility,” at the present day. See SCHOOL . “It is perhaps this humour of speaking no more words than we needs must which has so miserably curtailed some of our words, that in familiar writings and conversation they often lose all but their first syllables, as in MOB. , red., pos., incog., and the like.”— Add is on’s Spectator.