Other forms: throbbing, throbs, throbbed
To throb is to hurt in a slow beat, in time with your pulse. A thumb caught in a door, a tooth that starts throbbing at two in the morning, an ankle throbbing inside its bandage.
The beat does not have to be pain. Bass throbs through a club wall, an engine throbs below deck, a city throbs with traffic; anything with a strong steady pulse you can hear or feel will do. Throb is a noun as well: a throb of pain, a dull throb behind the eyes. The word carries its own sound, since the vowel is heavy and the ending lands flat, which is why it beats better than pulse does. In older romantic writing hearts throb, and heart-throb survives as the name for a singer or actor teenagers fall for.
1verbthrobTo hurt with a steady beat, in time with the pulse.
“My finger throbbed where the door had caught it.”
2verbsoundTo beat or sound with a strong steady rhythm.
“The bass throbbed through the floor of the flat.”
3nounregularA strong regular beat, or a single beat of pain.
“She felt a throb behind her eyes and closed the laptop.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
The trail for throb stops at Middle English throbben, with a Scots cousin thrab. No older root has been found for it. The word looks like an imitation of the thing itself, the dull double beat you hear inside your own head when something hurts.
Middle English
throbben
English, today
throb
From Middle English throbben; possibly of imitative of the sound origin. Cognate with Scots thrab (“to throb”). Compare also drub.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA