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Added 7 October 2026

babe

/beɪb/ noun

noun Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). Pronunciation from Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org. More about babe at Wordnik → Where our words come from →

A baby or infant; a very young human or animal. .mw-parser-output .defdate{font-size:smaller}
These events came to pass when he was but a babe.
An attractive person, especially a young woman.
She's a real babe!
A darling (a term of endearment).
Hey, babe, how's about you and me getting together?

Origin

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”). 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.

From Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org (CC BY-SA)

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