babă

Forms

babă f (plural babe)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic баба (baba, “grandmother, old woman, midwife”), a word from the language of children.^[2][3][1] DELR adds that contact with Bulgarian баба (baba), Serbo-Croatian and Ukrainian strengthened the word and gave it new senses, such as the names of fish, of the pelican and of a mushroom;^[2][4][5] DEX and the Wikționar give those three languages as the source.^[2][4][5] MDA2 also names Russian and Polish.^[6] In Old Church Slavonic the word meant “grandmother” and “midwife”.^[7]

The Slavic word continues Proto-Slavic *baba (“old woman”), a nursery word formed by reduplication.^[8][9][10] Vasmer compares Lithuanian boba (“old woman”) and Middle High German bābe.^[11] DELR mentions the view that some senses of the Slavic word belong to a separate formation, from an expressive base ⟨bab-⟩, ⟨pap-⟩ “to swell”.^[2]

The word survives in Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian as well: babã and bábă.^[3][12][13] Ciorănescu lists the same word in Albanian babë and Modern Greek βάβα (váva), all with senses between “old woman” and “grandmother”.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is in a Slavo-Romanian document of 1464;^[14][2] DELR's is a mountain called Babe in 1520.^[14][2] Personal names formed on the word occur in the 15th and 16th centuries.^[15] In Romanian texts MDA2 dates it to Moxa's chronicle (1620), with the sense “old woman”.^[6]

Semantic evolution

The old language used the word for a midwife: a gloss of the time explains it as „babele, ce slujesc la naștere” “the old women who serve at births”, and a 17th-century glossary renders it as Latin obstetrix.^[16] The Lexicon of Buda (1825) gives both “midwife” and “old woman”, and notes that in parts of Hungary the word was used for “mother”.^[17] “Grandmother” survives in Crișana and Transylvania, and “midwife” in Banat.^[2]

Ciorănescu explains the secondary senses by likeness to an old woman: the bullhead fish, the bee larva, the bare corn cob and the Moldavian cake; the senses “beam, prop” come from the idea of a woman who bears a load.^[3] He takes the cake from Polish, like French baba.^[3] For the cob with few grains DELR also cites a folk-etymology from babercă, a word for stunted crops.^[2] In folk belief the zilele babei, the first nine or twelve days of March with their changing weather, are linked to Baba Dochia, and Bulgarian has a matching бабини дни (babini dni).^[3][6] Used of a man, the word calls him a coward or a weakling.^[6][14]

Timeline

• 1464 – first record, in a Slavo-Romanian document.^[14]
• 1520 – Babe, the name of a mountain.^[2]
• 1620 – babă “old woman” in Moxa's chronicle.^[6]
• c. 1670 – baboi, a fish name, in a Slavonic–Romanian glossary.^[2]
• 1688 – babiță “pelican” in the Bucharest Bible.^[2]
• 1691–1697 – băbărie “old wives' remedies” in T. Corbea's dictionary.^[2]
• 1780–1801 – băbătie “old woman” in Micu's dictionary.^[2]
• 1825 – “midwife” and “old woman” in the Lexicon of Buda.^[17]
• 1847 – baborniță “decrepit old woman” in Alecsandri.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. An old woman, often pejorative; also, a woman past her youth.^[4][6][1]
2. An old woman who treats illness with folk remedies, spells and charms; a healer or witch.^[4][6]
3. (colloquial, humorous) Wife: baba mea.^[4][6]
4. (regional) grandmother;^[2][1] (regional) midwife.^[2][1]
5. (figurative) A coward.^[6][1]
6. A beam supporting a roof or a wooden floor.^[4][3]
7. The eye of a hook and eye, into which the hook (moș) fastens.^[4]
8. (ichthyology) The bullhead, zglăvoacă.^[4][2]
9. (regional) A red edible mushroom growing on dead branches.^[4]

Word family

• babană
• babetă
• baboi
• baborniță
• băban
• băbar
• băbălău
• băbăret
• băbărie
• băbătie
• băbesc
• băbește

Related words

• Aromanian babã
• Megleno-Romanian babă
• Proto-Slavic *baba

Usage notes

Zilele babei (or babele) are the first nine or twelve days of March;^[4] de-a baba-oarba is blind man's buff, and de-a baba-gaia a game in which one child guards the others from the “kite”.^[4] A proverb says satul arde și baba se piaptănă “the village is burning and the old woman combs her hair”, of someone busy with trifles in a crisis.^[18][14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2011–), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române (DELR), vol. I: A–B (2011), vol. II: C (2015–2018), București: Editura Academiei Române; continued online at delr.lingv.ro, p. s.v. babă
3. ^ a b c d e f g Ciorănescu, Alexandru (1958–1966), Diccionario etimológico rumano, La Laguna: Universidad de La Laguna (Romanian ed.: Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române, București: Saeculum, 2001), p. s.v. babă
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 84
5. ^ a b Wikționar (Romanian Wiktionary), ro.wiktionary.org
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 153
7. ^ Kurz, Josef; Hauptová, Zoe (eds.) (1958–1997), Slovník jazyka staroslověnského / Lexicon linguae palaeoslovenicae, 4 vols. + supplements, Praha: Academia; digital ed. gorazd.org
8. ^ Georgiev, Vladimir I. et al. (eds.) (1971–), Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik, Sofija: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite, p. 1, 23
9. ^ Vasmer, Max (1964–1973), Ètimologičeskij slovar' russkogo jazyka, transl. and suppl. by O. N. Trubačev, 4 vols., Moskva: Progress
10. ^ Derksen, Rick (2008), Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 4, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 32
11. ^ Vasmer, Max (1964–1973), Ètimologičeskij slovar' russkogo jazyka, transl. and suppl. by O. N. Trubačev, 4 vols., Moskva: Progress, p. 1, 99
12. ^ Pascu, Giorge (1925), Dictionnaire étymologique macédoroumain, 2 vols. (I: Les éléments latins et romans; II: Les éléments grecs, turcs, slaves, albanais, germaniques, magyars, néologismes, créations immédiates, obscurs), Iași: Cultura Națională, p. 2, 181
13. ^ Saramandu, Nicolae (coord.) et al. (2010–), Dicționarul dialectului meglenoromân, general și etimologic, fascicles in Fonetică și dialectologie XXIX–, p. 55
14. ^ a b c d e Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. babă
15. ^ Constantinescu, N. A. (1963), Dicționar onomastic romînesc, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. s.v. babă
16. ^ Costinescu, Mariana; Georgescu, Magdalena; Zgraon, Florentina (1987), Dicționarul limbii române literare vechi (1640–1780): termeni regionali, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 1, 62
17. ^ a b Lesicon românescu-latinescu-ungurescu-nemțescu quare de mai mulți autori, în cursul a trideci și mai multor ani s-au lucrat (1825), Buda: Typographia Universității (the Lexicon of Buda, ed. Petru Maior et al.), p. 41
18. ^ Academia Republicii Populare Romîne (1958), Dicționarul limbii romîne moderne, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 1, 62