Solved!
Ok, so the solution described mid-page here: Disabling user selection in UIWebView by TPoschel works as advertised...until you load a .pdf file into your UIWebView. Loading a .pdf results in the copy/define menu popping up again once the user performs a long touch in the UIWebView.
After another bout of hair pulling I found this answer on here by Johnny Rockex and it worked like a champ. UIWebView without Copy/Paste when displaying PDF files
Many thanks to him for this easy to implement, genius solution!! In fact this should be a universal solution, and work across the board without having to use webkit.