babuism

plural babuisms

1. countableuncountableA malapropism or other erroneous form produced by an Indian speaking English.

   They altered the idiom, but they could say whatever they wanted to say quickly; there were none of the babuisms ascribed to them up at the Club.

   1924, EM Forster, A Passage to India, Penguin, published 2005, page 60

   2 more examples

   Abandoning its original application, then, let us use "babu English," or "babuism," as a general term to mean discourse in which the speaker (or writer) throws around learned words he does not understand in order to create a favorable impression. Babuism probably has existed and will continue to exist in every culture in which there is a learned class of magicians, shamans, priests, teachers, and other professional verbalizers with big vocabularies.

   1972, Samuel Ichiyé Hayakawa, Language in thought and action, page 239

   This book, written 'with love' and based on Goffin's considerable experience as manager of first the Bombay Branch and then the whole India operation, was a spirited defence of Indian English as a legitimate form of the language, which, once it had thrown off its thrall to babuism, would take its place on the international stage.

   2006, Rimi B. Chatterjee, Empires of the Mind