name
Meaning 1
Synonym of Set (“Egyptian god”).
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: Set
Antonyms: none provided
Standard Lemma guide
baba
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Pronunciation
Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.
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/ˈbɑːbɑː/ variously
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/ˈbɑːbə/
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/ˈbæbə/
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Southern-England: Recorded audio is listed in the source snapshot.
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rhymes with -ɑːbɑː
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rhymes with -ɑːbə
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rhymes with -æbə
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CMU ARPABET: B AH1 B AH0 Digits mark lexical stress: 1 primary, 2 secondary, 0 unstressed.
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CMU ARPABET 2: B AA1 B AH0 Digits mark lexical stress: 1 primary, 2 secondary, 0 unstressed.
name
Meaning 2
Abbreviation of Alibaba.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: abbreviation, alt-of
Topics: business, finance, stock-ticker-symbol
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Meaning 3
A kind of sponge cake soaked in rum-flavoured syrup.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: also, uncountable, usually
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Meaning 4
A grandmother.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: countable, usually
Qualifier: especially among people of Eastern European ancestry
Examples
- 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.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Meaning 5
An old woman, especially a traditional old woman from an Eastern European culture.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: broadly, countable, usually
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Meaning 6
A father.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: countable, usually
Qualifier: especially among people of Indian or Chinese ancestry
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Meaning 7
A holy man, a spiritual leader.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: Hinduism, Sikhism, countable, usually
Topics: Islam, lifestyle, religion
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Meaning 8
A baby, child.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: British, India, countable, usually
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Meaning 9
In baby talk, often used for a variety of words beginning with b, such as bottle or blanket.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: countable, usually
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Meaning 10
A male Peranakan.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Meaning 11
a small cake leavened with yeast
Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
Broader terms: cake
Narrower terms: baba au rhum, rum baba
History
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: Albanian, Arabic, Western Armenian, Chinese, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, Greek, Marathi, Marshallese, Mingrelian, Nepali, Persian, Swahili, Turkish, Yoruba, Shona, Zulu * grandmother: many Slavic languages (such as Bulgarian, Czech, Russian, Serbo-Croatian and Polish; a doublet of bubbe), Romanian, Yiddish, Japanese * grandfather: Azerbaijani, Zulu (father, grandfather) * baby: Afrikaans, Sinhala, Hungarian 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 (ʔabū) and أَب (ʔab); see also Papak), and is linguistically related to the common European word papa and the word pope, having the same Indo-European origin. The Chinese word "baba", meaning father, comes from 爸爸.
From Malay Baba or baba.
Across languages
Translations
16 source translations are retained for this English entry.
- Catalan: babà — flavoured sponge cake
- Finnish: baba — flavoured sponge cake
- Greek: μπαμπάς (bampás) — flavoured sponge cake
- Italian: babà — flavoured sponge cake
- Polish: baba — flavoured sponge cake
- Bengali: বাবা (baba) — holy man, spiritual leader
- Finnish: isä — holy man, spiritual leader
- Kazakh: баба (baba) — holy man, spiritual leader
- Marathi: बाबा (bābā) — holy man, spiritual leader
- Odia: ବାବା (bābā) — holy man, spiritual leader
- Polish: baba — holy man, spiritual leader
- Telugu: బాబా (bābā) — holy man, spiritual leader
- Turkish: baba — holy man, spiritual leader
- Turkish: peder — holy man, spiritual leader
- Turkish: pederler — holy man, spiritual leader
- Turkish: babalar — holy man, spiritual leader