Why is a person that mends shoes called a cobbler?
“Cobble, Cobbler. To cobble is to mend anything in a clumsy, rough, and imperfect manner. A cobbler is almost exclusively used in the sense of an inferior shoemaker or shoe-mender, but it had once a more extended application : Thou art a cobbler, art thou ?—Julius Cersar, act i. scene I. No satisfactory etymology has been given in any English dictionary. The latest attempted is that of Mr. Wedgwood, who thinks that it may come from a corruption of hobble, to walk clumsily; and that the designation may have been transferred from the walker to the imperfectly mended shoes in which he walked. He adds, however, that a more plausible origin is the Swedish klabba, properly to daub, or work unskilfully. The Keltic displays a much better source for this ancient and still popular word in ceap (cap), a shoemaker’s last; ceabag, awkward, clumsy; ceapail, binding, fettering, stopping in a clumsy and imperfect manner. It is to be remarked that b and / in the Keltic languages are pronounced alike, o
