Herbert
name, noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A working-class youth, especially male. slang
"It was the Ulster Annual Jamboree. For weeks past, hundreds of spotty-faced herberts, with yodelling voices and chin fuzz, had tied three million knots, started ten thousand twig fires, and completed six hundred leaf fires; perfect training for round about 3000BC but bloody useless in the twentieth century."
- 2 A foolish or contemptible person, especially male. slang
"For quotations using this term, see Citations:herbert."
- 1 A male given name from the Germanic languages, in modern use partly transferred back from the surname.
"Herbert, Sydney, Milton, Seymour. You know, all the time I was growing up I thought those were the most ordinary Jewish first names, until someone pointed out that they were British last names. I guess to my great-grandparents those names must have sounded so modern, so sophisticated, so - non-Eastern European. And now they're just Uncle Miltie, Uncle Sy, Uncle Herb. Do other people have Uncle Donne and Uncle Wordsworth?"
- 2 A surname originating as a patronymic.
"And you, Sir Walter Herbert, stay with me."
- 3 A small town in North Otago, New Zealand.
- 4 A rural locality in Litchfield Municipality, Northern Territory, Australia.
- 5 A former government town in South Australia.
Show 2 more definitions
- 6 A town in the Rural Municipality of Morse No. 165, Saskatchewan, Canada.
- 7 An unincorporated community in Boone County, Illinois, United States.
Example
More examples"Herbert Hoover won the election of 1928."
Etymology
From Old French Herbert, from Frankish *Hariberht.
* (working-class youth): From the name Herbert. The term was popularised by the punk movement but predates it.
Related phrases
More for "herbert"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.