Definition of "jib"

“Who calls, who calls?” cried Essper; a shout was the only answer. There was no path, but the underwood was low, and Vivian took his horse, an old forester, across it with ease. Essper’s jibbed.

1826, Benjamin Disraeli, Vivian Grey‎, London: Henry Colburn, published 1827, Volume 4, Book 6, page 73

Then he got fever, and had to be carried in a hammock slung under a pole. As he weighed sixteen stone I had no end of rows with the carriers. They jibbed, ran away, sneaked off with their loads in the night—quite a mutiny.

1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], part I

The lama jibbed at the open door of a crowded third-class carriage. ‘Were it not better to walk?’ said he weakly.

1901, Rudyard Kipling, chapter 2, in Kim‎

"Where are we going?" she asked, jibbing capriciously in the descent.

1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1965, page 119

“Juno has a kindly gait. She neither jibs nor shies, though she will take a fence no more. […] ”

1989, Jack Vance, chapter 8, in Madouc

“What say you to the young lady herself?” said Craigengelt; “the finest young woman in all Scotland, one that you used to be so fond of when she was cross, and now she consents to have you, and gives up her engagement with Ravenswood, you are for jibbing. I must say, the devil’s in ye, when ye neither know what you would have nor what you would want.”

1819, Walter Scott, chapter 28, in The Bride of Lammermoor‎

Some of us began to jib when the family began to collect portraits of their new son to decorate their walls [...].

1992, Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety, Harper Perennial, published 2007, pages 401–2

The Parlement scarcely jibbed.

2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 318

Forgetting that the jibs, whom they insulted, were afterwards to grow into the influential men […]

1840, The University Magazine: A Literary and Philosophic Review, page 133

[I]n a healthy environment, young Mahoney might have taken the risk, both with University and, in part, with entering the Aula for the jibs dance.

2014, Peter Guy, As Mirrors Are Lonely, page 115