babusya

plural babusi · plural babusyas · alternative babusia

1. A Ukrainian grandmother.

   “Aaaahhhh!” the babusya cried, throwing her arms wide and wrapping them around her granddaughter.[…]“Mary, this is my babusya.”

   2009, Chuck Holton, Meltdown (Task Force Valor; book three), Multnomah Books, →ISBN, page 254

   4 more examples

   When Father Hryhorii first arrived, the old babusyas, ignorant of the way religious affairs were ordered, thanked God that the church was not sealed up or blown into the air.[…]‘Who are you going to see, sir?’ A babusya, who was sitting near to him on the bus asked, ‘Perhaps your family. I know everyone in the village, I see you are not a local.’

   2013, Vasyl Baziv, translated by Stephen Komarnyckyj, The Cross, or the Chocolates that Exploded: A Post Biblical Detective Story, Tucson, Ariz.: Anaphora Literary Press, pages 8 and 195

   I thought we’d just take my babusya to visit relatives in Vinnytsia and then, after stopping by my dad’s parents’ house in Snizhne, we would return to Tallinn in time to see the final episodes of Dynasty.[…]I didn’t cry even though as I buried my babusya, I was also burying my secret hopes of visiting her and staying permanently.

   2021, Sofi Oksanen, translated by Owen F. Witesman, Dog Park, Alfred A. Knopf, →ISBN

   As my mother told me this story, I always just assumed that my babusya gave my mother the doll to keep her, a small, bedridden child, occupied, but my mother always emphasized the importance of the doll and how it was given to her to help her get better.

   2022, Madame Pamita, Baba Yaga’s Book of Witchcraft: Slavic Magic from the Witch of the Woods, Llewellyn Worldwide, →ISBN

   What keeps him going is the reaction he gets from the people he helps, the sweet, old babusyas he delivers medication to, the kids in the children’s ward, injured from shelling, whose eyes lit up when they saw the toys he brought them.

   2022 June 12, Brandon Barrett, “From the Sea to Sky to Kharkiv, a ray of hope”, in Pique Newsmagazine, archived from the original on 21 Sep 2023