Wiktionary
a. (alternative spelling of hobnailed English)
Usage examples of "hob-nailed".
I moved out of the shadows on to one of the main central gangways, my rubber shoes quite soundless on the wet wood, and even had I been clumping along in hob-nailed boots I question whether anyone -- other than those who were ill-intentioned to me -- would have paid any heed, because although all the barges were almost certainly inhabited by their crews and in many cases their crews and families, there were only one or two scattered cabin lights to be seen among all the hundreds of craft lying there: and apart from the faint threnody of the wind and the soft creaking and rubbing as the wind made the barges work gently at their moorings, the silence was total.
They moved swiftly aft, crouched low as if making a stealthy approach, an attempt in which they were rather handicapped by being flung from bulkhead to bulkhead with every lurch of the Colombo: they had tried to compensate for this by removing their boots, no doubt to reduce the noise level of their approach, a rather ludicrous tactic in the circumstances because the torpedo boat was banging and crashing about to such a high decibel extent that they could have marched purposefully along in hob-nailed boots without anyone being any way the wiser.
All the time you were upstairs someone was jumping on the floor with hob-nailed boots!
He was almost ready to give up in despair, cursing himself for being such a fool as to think that he could pick up a trail, when, clearly marked in a bit of softer soil, he saw the print of a hob-nailed boot.
The silence of the night was disturbed only by the sound of the man's hob-nailed boots and the horse's iron-shod feet on the road.