Etymology

babe

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Today it means: A baby or infant; a very young human or animal. Full definition →

Middle English babe ← Old English *baba ← Proto-West Germanic *babō
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babe · noun1

  1. Proto-Indo-European*bʰā-
  2. Proto-Germanic*bō-redup.
  3. Proto-Germanic*babô
  4. Proto-West Germanic*babō
  5. Old English*baba
  6. Middle Englishbabe
  7. English todaybabe

From Middle English babe, a variant of earlier baban, perhaps from Old English *baba (“boy, child”), from Proto-West Germanic *babō, from Proto-Germanic *babô, reduplicated variant of *ba-, *bō- (“father, brother, close male relation”). cognates and related terms Related to Old Frisian bobba (“child”) (whence North Frisian babbe, babb, babe (“child”)), Old High German Babo (a male forename), see boy. Otherwise, origin obscure. Compare mama, dada, papa. Welsh baban (“baby”), believed by Skeat to be a mutation of maban, a diminutive of mab (“son”), is probably rather a borrowing from English. Cognate also with English bub.

Babe · proper noun2

Use of the common noun babe as a (nick)name.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.