English
baba
Noun

baba (plural babas)

  1. A kind of sponge cake soaked in rum-flavoured syrup.
  2. (esp. among people of East European ancestry) A grandmother.
    • 1993, Karen Dubinsky, Improper Advances: Rape and Heterosexual Conflict in Ontario, 1880-1929, University of Chicago Press
      My baba, Ksenia Dubinsky, tells me that my education makes her proud.
    • 2001, Brattleboro Remembers, edited by the Brattleboro [Vermont] Historical Society, Arcadia Publishing
      I walked first for my grandmother, and my mother was sorry she had missed my first steps. My Baba was so proud, my mother later told me.
    • 2004, A Woman's Europe: True Stories, edited by MaryBeth Bond
      As we made eye contact, I slowly began to wonder if she was Baba. I did not know my grandmother though I'd spoken with her several times on the telephone;
  3. An old woman, especially a traditional old woman from an eastern European culture.
    • 2003, Food Tourism Around The World: Development, Management and Markets, edited by Colin Michael Hall and Liz Sharples
      According to some, new volunteers are becoming more difficult to recruit and there are dark suggestions that 'money is being made on the backs of the babas', the dedicated, but ageing ladies who still spend countless hours of their time preparing foodstuffs for the occasion.
  4. (esp. among people of Indian ancestry) A father.
    • 1998, Mulan (movie)
      "The greatest gift and honor is having you for a daughter. I've missed you so." "I've missed you too, baba."
    • 2002, Bend It Like Beckham (movie)
      Okay. Okay. Fine, baba. Let's just do it before something else goes wrong.
    • 2003, House of Sand and Fog (movie)
      "Do not be disrespectful, son. Look at me." "Baba, were you a Savaki?"
  5. (Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism) A holy man, a spiritual leader.
  6. (India, dated) A baby, child.
  7. In baby talk, often used for a variety of words beginning with b, such as bottle or blanket.
    • 2004, House (TV, episode 1.14)
      Oh, it's storytime! Let me get my baba.
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