"zob" (U.S. slang, rare) may have its origin in a baseball conte...

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>"Zob" with the variants "zobi", "zeb" or "zébi" is well established in
>French slang since at least 1870 (Esnault, Dictionnaire des argots). It
>comes from maghrebin Arabic "zebbi" or classical Arabic "zubb". The sense
>of the word is "penis", and it is very often used pejoratively about a person.

Whence French "ze`bre" = "guy"? Also = "penis" or so (e.g., in Farmer,
"Vocabula Amatoria")?

The resemblance to the US word "zob" might or might not be coincidental, I
suppose?

Spears' slang dictionary shows both "zob" and similar "zib".

Cf. "yob" (which would seem to be originally backslang) and "slob" which
seem to be used similarly sometimes.

-- Doug Wilson