glob

Etymology

Possibly a blend of blob + gob or a clipping of globule. An element of sound symbolism is clearly involved: compare such phonetically and semantically similar words as glop, gop, blob, clump and clod. (Still, globe, clump and clod may be related via the Proto-Indo-European root *gel-; compare clew.) In the programming sense, originates from the early (c. 1970) Unix command glob; short for global. In the biological sense, proposed by Bevil R. Conway and Doris Y. Tsao, by analogy with the cytochrome-oxidase "blobs" of V1, an earlier stage in the hierarchical elaboration of colour.

noun

1. A round, shapeless or amorphous lump, as of a semisolid substance.
   He put a glob of paint into the cup and went on painting.
2. (programming) A limited pattern matching technique using wildcards, less powerful than a regular expression.
3. (biology) A millimeter-sized colour module found beyond the visual area V2 in the brain's parvocellular pathway.

verb

1. To stick in globs or lumps.
   Paint was globbing off the wall.
2. (programming) To carry out pattern matching using a glob.