babbitt
see also: Babbitt
Pronunciation Noun
Babbitt
Noun
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.004
see also: Babbitt
Pronunciation Noun
babbitt
- A soft white alloy of variable composition (as a nine parts of tin to one of copper, or of fifty parts of tin to five of antimony and one of copper) used in bearings to diminish friction.
- Synonyms: Babbitt metal, Babbitt's metal, babbitt metal, bearing metal
- German: Lagermetall
- Russian: ба́ббит
babbitt (babbitts, present participle babbitting; past and past participle babbitted)
- (transitive) To line with this metal to reduce friction.
babbitt (plural babbitts)
- A person who subscribes complacently to materialistic middle-class ideals.
- 1927 Ira Gershwin, "The Babbit and the Bromide," from the stage musical "Funny Face" (1927). Lyrics collected in: Louis Kronenberger (2008) An Anthology of Light Verse, p.234
- A Babbitt met a Bromide on the avenue one day. They held a conversation in their own peculiar way.
- 1930 The Literary digest, Volume 105, Funk and Wagnalls, p.21
- One speaks of a babbitt habit, a babbitt era. Nothing is more true. America recognized itself in Babbitt, it demurred, but it also admired.
- 1951 The Georgia review, Volume 5, University of Georgia, p.150
- If there's one thing I can't stand, it's a Babbitt. Say, there's nothing more wonderful than defying middle-class conventions.
- 2002 Tamkang review, Volume 33, Tamkang College of Arts and Sciences, p.158
- […] a "babbitt" is a person full of self-confident bluster who is nevertheless a narrowminded philistine and a hypocrite.
- 2003 William Hyland, George Gershwin: a new biography, Greenwood Publishing Group, p.116
- Ira relished telling the story that Fred Astaire took him aside and said he knew what a babbitt was, but what was a bromide?
- 2009 Phillip G. Payne, Dead last: the public memory of Warren G. Harding's scandalous legacy, Ohio University Press, p.12
- In this sense Harding was a Babbitt. Intellectuals and journalists rejected Harding as being as empty as the Sinclair Lewis character.
- 1927 Ira Gershwin, "The Babbit and the Bromide," from the stage musical "Funny Face" (1927). Lyrics collected in: Louis Kronenberger (2008) An Anthology of Light Verse, p.234
Babbitt
Noun
babbitt (plural babbitts)
- Alternative form of babbitt
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.004