babulia

plural babulias

1. alternativeAlternative spelling of babulya.

   He greeted Faina exuberantly giving her a big hug as he affectionally called her babulia, grandmother.

   [2008, Joan Heron, “Thursdays with Faina”, in Chai Budesh? Anyone for Tea? A Peace Corps Memoir of Turkmenistan, Baltimore, Md.: PublishAmerica, →ISBN

   5 more examples

   Efrosinya Gadzhieva has been coming to Gorky Park since Stalin’s time. ‘In those days the flowers were tended,’ she muses, her gold teeth glistening in the sun. ‘Now it’s just arcades and noise. Then you could buy sandwiches with caviar, not all these strange kebabs.’ But Babulia (granny), as the locals call her, is not one to complain. Since 1976, she has been operating the weighing scales from her spot near the shooting range.

   1992 August 1, John Kampfner, “A Year in the Life of Gorky Park”, in Telegraph Magazine, London, →OCLC, page 38, column 3

   Even those who, out of love for the vine, are still growing their own grapes are far from sure they are doing the right thing, said Babulia Otiashvili, 55, a grandmother harvesting in giant wicker baskets the last of the grapes on her two-acre private plot.

   1996 November 9, Vanora Bennett, “Georgia on the Vine: Revived Interest in the Grape Helping Ex-Soviet Republic Return from Brink”, in Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, Calif.: Times Mirror Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, page D3, column 3

   To be sure, people of all ages were on Maidan, and the grandmothers, the babulias, were out there in full force.

   2005 March 10, Trident, “Orange Revolution In Ukraine - Why It Happened”, in soc.culture.ukrainian (Usenet), archived from the original on 17 May 2025

   Nadia’s grandmother is that extremely rare thing in Chekhov’s work, an almost entirely negative character. This is brought out in his opening description of her, which emphasises her physical repulsiveness: ‘Grandmother, or, as she was called at home “babulia”, was very fat, ugly, with thick eye-brows and a little moustache.[…]’

   [2007, Joe Andrew, “‘A Room of One’s Own’, Part II: Narrative, Gender and Space in The Fiancée”, in Narrative, Space and Gender in Russian Fiction, 1846–1903, Amsterdam: Rodopi, →ISBN, page 167

   Here at the dacha no one ever pushes and tells me: “Babulia [diminutive for babushka], what are you doing here? Go home and do not bother me!” [laughs] And when I am in Moscow, I am constantly hearing “Babulia, come here. Babulia, come over here. Babulia . . . .”

   2011, Melissa L. Caldwell, quoting Svetlana, “The Pleasure of Pain: Gardening for the Soul”, in Dacha Idylls: Living Organically in Russia’s Countryside, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, →ISBN, page 63