Other forms: lobed, lobbed, lobbing, lobs, lobing
To lob something is to throw or hit it in a high slow arc. Up and over, rather than straight and fast.
Tennis has the technical sense, where a lob goes over an opponent standing at the net, and it is a noun there as well as a verb. Cricket and football use it the same way. Everyday speech uses it for any casual underarm throw, as in lobbing a ball across a garden. There is a nice figurative use in argument, since lobbing a question into a meeting means dropping it in and watching what happens.
A lob dangles. Middle English lob was a word for lumpish, hanging things, from a Germanic root meaning that which hangs or dangles, so the high slow shot is named for its droop.
First attested late 16th c. in the sense "allow or cause to dangle, hang," from lob#Etymology_2.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA