mobbing

1. 1
   noununcountable

   Bullying carried out by a group acting together to target a single individual.

   Like a whole crowd turning on one person who has no one on their side.

   Workplace mobbing can drive a capable employee to quit within months.

   The investigation revealed years of mobbing directed at one junior nurse.

   Similarbullying, harassment, victimization, persecution

   Note

   The human counterpart of prey turning on a predator, and serious enough to title a book. Maureen P. Duffy and Len Sperry's Mobbing: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions (2012) speaks of "the Salem Witch Hunt mobbings." The plural there names whole episodes in which a community turns on its targets. As an uncountable noun it names the process; as a countable one it names a particular campaign.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of mob.

   Reporters were mobbing the actor as she left the courtroom.

   Mobbing the substitute teacher quickly turned the classroom into chaos.

   Note

   The -ing form of a verb that takes a direct object. A crowd mobs a person, as reporters mob an actor, or it mobs a place it packs into. The final b doubles before -ing. The same spelling also serves as a noun, from the animal behavior to group bullying. To tell them apart, check for an object: the gerund keeps one (mobbing the teacher), while the noun stands alone.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   Aggressive group behavior in which several animals harass or attack a single individual, especially a predator.

   Like a neighborhood banding together to chase a burglar off the street.

   Mobbing by jackdaws forced the buzzard to abandon its perch.

   Researchers recorded intense mobbing whenever a fox approached the gull colony.

   Similarharassment

   Note

   A biologist's term with a telling reversal: the crowd is usually the threatened party, smaller animals turning on the hunter. The aim is to harass the predator, chase it or dive at it until it leaves. It works as a mass noun for the behavior (mobbing by jackdaws) and as a count noun for a single episode (a mobbing of a fox near the colony).

4. 4
   noununcountable

   A software development practice in which the entire team works on the same task at the same time, using a single computer.

   Like a surgical team working together, each member guiding the one whose hands are on the work.

   Their shift to mobbing cut down on review delays and spread expertise across the team.

   We tried mobbing for the trickiest module and shipped it without a single bug.

   Note

   Software engineers' clipped name for mob programming, which extends pair programming from two people to the whole team. One person types while the others steer the design. In this setting the word carries none of the hostility of the bullying sense. The development-team context keeps the two apart: a team that adopts mobbing is choosing a method, not targeting anyone.

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