baba

Etymology

As one of the first utterances many babies are able to say, baba (like mama, papa, and dada) has come to be used in many languages as a term for various family members:

• father: Arabic, Western Armenian, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Greek, Marathi, Nepali, Persian, Swahili, Turkish, Yoruba, Shona, Zulu
• grandmother: many Slavic languages (such as Bulgarian, Russian, Czech and Polish), Yiddish, Japanese
• grandfather: Azerbaijani
• baby: Afrikaans, Sinhala

These terms often continue to be used by English speakers whose families came from one of these cultures. In some cases, they may become more widely used in localities that have been heavily influenced by an immigrant community. Some senses were extensions of one of these family terms in the original languages ("old woman" from "grandmother", "holy man" from "father"). The "cake" sense comes through French, from Polish baba (“old woman”). The Middle Eastern word baba (as in Ali Baba) is rather a term of endearment, and is ultimately derived from Persian بابا‎ (bābā, “father”) (from Old Persian pāpa (); as opposed to the Arabic words أَبُو‎ (ʾabū) and أَب‎ (ʾab), as well as the Turkish word ata; see also Papak), and is linguistically related to the common European word papa and the word pope, having the same Indo-European origin.

Noun

baba (plural babas)

1. A kind of sponge cake soaked in rum-flavoured syrup.
2. (esp. among people of East European ancestry) A grandmother.
   • 1993, Karen Dubinsky, Improper Advances: Rape and Heterosexual Conflict in Ontario, 1880-1929, University of Chicago Press

     My baba, Ksenia Dubinsky, tells me that my education makes her proud.

   • 2001, Brattleboro Remembers, edited by the Brattleboro [Vermont] Historical Society, Arcadia Publishing

     I walked first for my grandmother, and my mother was sorry she had missed my first steps. My Baba was so proud, my mother later told me.

   • 2004, A Woman's Europe: True Stories, edited by MaryBeth Bond

     As we made eye contact, I slowly began to wonder if she was Baba. I did not know my grandmother though I'd spoken with her several times on the telephone;

3. An old woman, especially a traditional old woman from an eastern European culture.
   • 1914, Russell Sage Foundation, Wage-earning Pittsburgh

     Only two women, typical "babas" (peasant women) in the house from which I got my quilt and bedcloth, could be coaxed to pose;

   • 1986, Janice Kulyk Keefer, The Paris-Napoli Express

     Laura hadn't known that anyone's mother could look like that, like the babas you sometimes saw downtown, bandaged in kerchiefs and aprons, sitting toothless in stockinged feet on small verandahs, peeling potatoes or beets or just shaking their heads and grimacing.

   • 2003, Food Tourism Around The World: Development, Management and Markets, edited by Colin Michael Hall and Liz Sharples

     According to some, new volunteers are becoming more difficult to recruit and there are dark suggestions that 'money is being made on the backs of the babas', the dedicated, but ageing ladies who still spend countless hours of their time preparing foodstuffs for the occasion.

4. (esp. among people of Indian ancestry) A father.
   • 1849, Edward Bulwer Lytton, The Caxtons

     The first time I signed my exercise I wrote "Pisistratus Caxton" in my best round-hand. "And dey call your baba a scholar!" said the Doctor, contemptuously.

   • 1998, Mulan (movie)

     "The greatest gift and honor is having you for a daughter. I've missed you so." "I've missed you too, baba."

   • 2002, Bend It Like Beckham (movie)

     Okay. Okay. Fine, baba. Let's just do it before something else goes wrong.

   • 2003, House of Sand and Fog (movie)

     "Do not be disrespectful, son. Look at me." "Baba, were you a Savaki?"

5. (Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism) A holy man, a spiritual leader.
   • 1995, Hugh J.M. Johnston and Tara Singh Bains, The Four Quarters of the Night: The Life-Journey of an Emigrant Sikh

     While I was in Port Alberni, three babas came to Canada to raise money ...

   • 2004, Andrew Robinson, Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye: The Biography of a Master Film-Maker

     But according to Ray, 'all the babas my uncle knew were genuine. None of them was exposed. They were fairly humble people, not show-offs like the Maharishi ...

   • 2006, Suraiya Faroqhi, Subjects Of The Sultan: Culture And Daily Life In The Ottoman Empire

     Most babas had little contact with written culture and are not therefore named in books and treatises.

6. (India, dated) A baby, child.
   • 1876, Sir George Otto Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay

     That is to say, if I do not take care, I shall go on calling my darling 'Baba' till she is as old as her mamma, and has a dozen Babas of her own.

   • 1904, Rudyard Kipling, Traffics and Discoveries

     For my child is dead--my baba is dead!

7. In baby talk, often used for a variety of words beginning with b, such as bottle or blanket.
   • 2004, House (TV, episode 1.14)

     Oh, it's storytime! Let me get my baba.

Anagrams

• AABB, Abba, abab, abba

Noun

baba (plural babas)

1. baby

Verb

baba (present baba, present participle babaende, past participle gebaba)

1. to treat with gentle care, to coddle

Etymology

Borrowed from Ottoman Turkish بابا‎ (baba).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [baba] (Tosk)
• IPA^(key): [bɑba] (Gheg)

Noun

baba m (definite singular babi, definite plural baballarë)

1. father

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [bɑˈbɑ]
• Hyphenation: ba‧ba

Noun

baba (definite accusative babanı, plural babalar)

1. grandfather

Pronunciation 1

• (General Cebuano) IPA^(key): /baʔbaʔ/
• Rhymes: -aʔ
• Hyphenation: ba‧ba

Pronunciation 2

• (General Cebuano) IPA^(key): /ˈbaba/
• Rhymes: -a
• Hyphenation: ba‧ba

Noun

baba

1. father
2. dad

Etymology

From Proto-Slavic *baba.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /baba/

Noun

baba f

1. crone, hag
2. coward, milksop
3. (informal) girl, chick

Further reading

• baba in Kartotéka Novočeského lexikálního archivu

Etymology

Unknown.

Noun

baba (plural babanim a)

1. Title of the second chief butcher

Noun

baba

1. plural of babli (a featherless fowl)

Etymology

From Polish baba, probably via French

Pronunciation

• Hyphenation: ba‧ba

Noun

baba

1. baba, babka (type of cake)

Etymology

Borrowed from Polish baba, introduced in France in the eighteenth century at the court of Stanisław Leszczyński, king of Poland, duke of Lorraine and father-in-law of Louis XV.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ba.ba/

Noun

baba m (plural babas)

1. baba (type of cake)
   • baba au rhum ― (please add an English translation of this usage example)

References

• “baba” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Further reading

• “baba” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Etymology

A link of the term with the English bye-bye is possible but not certain.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -aː

Interjection

baba

1. (informal, chiefly in Austria) see you, so long

Noun

bába or bâbâ

1. mouth

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [ˈbɒbɒ]

• Audio

  (file)

• Hyphenation: ba‧ba

Noun

baba (plural babák)

1. doll
2. baby (very young child)

Romanization

baba

1. Rōmaji transcription of ばば

Alternative forms

• baaba

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /βàːβǎꜜ/

The first a is pronounced long.^[1]

As for Tonal Class, Benson (1964) classifies this term into Class 6 with a disyllabic stem, together with mũgwacĩ, nyamũ, and so on.

• (Kiambu)

• (Limuru) As for Tonal Class, Yukawa (1981) classifies this term into a group including guka, gũtũ, mũguĩ, mũtwe, nyamũ, ruo, rũhĩ (pl. hĩ), rũkũ (pl. ngũ), taata (“my aunt”), ũta (pl. mota), ũthiũ (pl. mothiũ), and so on.^[2]

• (Ndia) The same underlying pattern as that of rũhĩ and mothiũ.^[3]
• (Nyeri) The same underlying pattern as that of mothiũ and ruo.^[3]

Noun

baba class 1

1. my father, dad

References

Etymology

From Proto-Slavic *baba.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbaba/

Noun

baba f (diminutive babka)

1. midwife
2. old woman
3. woman
4. sponge cake

Further reading

• baba in Ernst Muka/Mucke (St. Petersburg and Prague 1911–28): Słownik dolnoserbskeje rěcy a jeje narěcow / Wörterbuch der nieder-wendischen Sprache und ihrer Dialekte. Reprinted 2008, Bautzen: Domowina-Verlag.
• baba in Manfred Starosta (1999): Dolnoserbsko-nimski słownik / Niedersorbisch-deutsches Wörterbuch. Bautzen: Domowina-Verlag.

Noun

baba

1. father

Etymology

Voiced bapa.

Pronunciation

• (Johor-Selangor) IPA^(key): /babə/
• (Riau-Lingga) IPA^(key): /baba/
• Rhymes: -abə, -bə, -ə
• Rhymes: -ə

Noun

baba (plural baba-baba)

1. father (male parent)

Noun

baba

1. father

   La katskats tasàk à kəslah iyaw aŋatà à ahəŋ la baba aŋatà gà, tanəfà Yesu. (Mata 4:22)

   And immediately they left the boat and their father and followed Jesus. (Matthew 4:22)

Alternative forms

• wawa

Noun

baba class 1a (plural wababa)

1. father

Noun

baba

1. water
2. rain, rainwater

References

• Aboriginal Languages of the Pilbara: Ngarluma (1990); HG

Etymology 1

From Proto-Slavic *baba, from Proto-Balto-Slavic *bā́ˀbāˀ. From nursery language.

Etymology 2

Further reading

• baba in Polish dictionaries at PWN

Etymology

From the hypothesized Vulgar Latin *baba, ultimately imitative of children speech on the pattern of the repeated syllable ba.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈba.bɐ/
• Rhymes: -aba

Noun

baba f (plural babas)

1. drool, dribble

Verb

baba

1. third-person singular (ele and ela, also used with você and others) present indicative of babar
2. second-person singular (tu, sometimes used with você) affirmative imperative of babar

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [ˈba.ba]

Noun

baba

1. definite singular of babă

Etymology

From Proto-Slavic *baba.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bâba/
• Hyphenation: ba‧ba

Noun

bȁba f (Cyrillic spelling ба̏ба)

1. (regional) grandmother
2. granny, grandma
3. (usually pejorative) old woman
4. (pejorative) female person

References

• “baba” in Hrvatski jezični portal

Etymology

From Proto-Bantu *bààbá.

Noun

baba class 1a

1. father

Etymology

From Proto-Slavic *baba.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbaba/

Noun

baba f (genitive singular baby, nominative plural baby, genitive plural báb, declension pattern of žena)

1. (colloquial) old woman
2. (colloquial) girl
3. (oldfashioned) midwife
4. (oldfashioned) doll
5. (oldfashioned) puppet
6. (oldfashioned) hash brown zemiaková baba, now zemiaková placka

Further reading

• baba in Slovak dictionaries at korpus.sk

Etymology

From Proto-Slavic *baba.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbàːba/
• Tonal orthography: bába

Noun

bába f (genitive bábe, nominative plural bábe)

1. old woman, hag

Etymology

From the hypothesized Vulgar Latin *baba (“drooling, infantile talk”), ultimately imitative of children speech on the pattern of the repeated syllable ba.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbaba/, [ˈbaβa]

Noun

baba f (plural babas)

1. drool, dribble

   La chacha lavaba, y mientras lavaba, la baba se le caía. ― (please add an English translation of this usage example)

See also

• cieno
• lama

Further reading

• “baba” in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014.

Etymology

From Proto-Bantu *bààbá.

Noun

baba (n class, plural baba)

1. father (male parent)

Adverb

baba

1. low

Noun

baba

1. (anatomy) chin

Verb

baba

1. to descend
2. to piggyback

Etymology

Likely from reduplication of ba, from child speak. May be related to ata.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bɑˈbɑ/
• Hyphenation: ba‧ba

Noun

baba (definite accusative babayı, plural babalar)

1. father
2. Saint (as in Gül Baba)

Further reading

• baba in Turkish dictionaries at Türk Dil Kurumu

Etymology

From Proto-Slavic *baba.

Noun

baba f

1. old woman, grandmother
2. midwife
3. dough, pastry
4. pelican (bird)

Etymology 1

From Proto-Nguni [Term?], from Proto-Bantu *-bába.

Etymology 2

See etymology on the main entry.

References

• C. M. Doke; B. W. Vilakazi (1972), “ɓaɓa”, in Zulu-English Dictionary, →ISBN: “ɓaɓa (3.9) v.”
• C. M. Doke; B. W. Vilakazi (1972), “ɓaɓa”, in Zulu-English Dictionary, →ISBN: “ɓaɓa (3-5.4) voc. interj.”