babe

CEFRB1

/beɪb/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A baby or young child.

  2. 02

    noun

    An attractive young person, in informal speech.

Examples

  • Get in the car, babe. We're driving to Madagascar.

  • I can't believe you're so clueless. You're like a babe in the woods.

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
4
Synonyms
5

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. A darling (a term of endearment).

  2. An attractive person, especially a young woman.

  3. A baby or infant; a very young human or animal.

More examples

In context

  • The cradle is as brand new as the born babe lying in it.

  • Hey, babe, how's about you and me getting together?

  • These events came to pass when he was but a babe.

Synonyms

Quick test

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The proud mother smiled down at her newborn blank sleeping peacefully in the crib.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

From Middle English babe, a variant of earlier baban, perhaps from Old English *baba (“boy, child”), from Proto-West Germanic *babō, from Proto-Germanic *babô, reduplicated variant of *ba-, *bō- (“father, brother, close male relation”). cognates and related terms Related to Old Frisian bobba (“child”) (whence North Frisian babbe, babb, babe (“child”)), Old High German Babo (a male forename), see boy. Otherwise, origin obscure. Compare mama, dada, papa. Welsh baban (“baby”), believed by Skeat to be a mutation of maban, a diminutive of mab (“son”), is probably rather a borrowing from English. Cognate also with English bub.