thob

present singular third person thobs · participle present thobbing · participle past thobbed · past thobbed

1. intransitiverareTo engage in wishful thinking; to believe something regardless of evidence because it aligns with one's opinion; to rationalize.

   It is by no means merely the uneducated who thob. Men of science have always thobbed, helping out fact with notions that appealed to them or were already well settled in their minds.

   1928, Joseph Jastrow, Keeping Mentally Fit: A Guide to Everyday Psychology, New York: Greenberg, page 107

   3 more examples

   Oh, there's no possible way of distinguishing the ideas. Everything depends on how you regard them. If you dearly love a theory, you are thobbing. If you are curious about it, you are not thobbing.

   1926, Henshaw Ward, “Studio Lecture”, in Thobbing: A Seat at the Circus of the Intellect, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, page 12

   In the United States, and in what Kipling called the Five Free Nations, all men are granted the right to hold what opinions and beliefs they choose; and so thobbing is free, even as all emotional thinking is free—at least in some regions. And the sad thing is that thobbing is easy and required thinking is hard.

   1956 September 15, Frederick K. Morris, “Let Us Think Clearly: The Art and Science of Thinking”, in Vital Speeches of the Day, volume 22, number 23, page 735

   Your best protection against thobbing is to develop the habit of thinking about your thinking. (The technical name for this activity is metacognition.) More specifically, be aware of your initial feelings about problems and issues, particularly those that prompt you to take a stand immediately, without examining the evidence or weighing competing views.

   1995, Vincent Ryan Ruggiero, The Art of Thinking: A Guide to Critical and Creative Thought, 4th edition, New York: HarperCollins, page 49

   Synonyms: wishcast