baba

Definition

A kind of sponge cake soaked in rum-flavoured syrup.

Etymology

As one of the first utterances many babies are able to say, baba (like mama, papa, and dada) has come to be used in many languages as a term for various family members: * father: Albanian, Arabic, Western Armenian, Chinese, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, Greek, Marathi, Mingrelian, Nepali, Persian, Swahili, Turkish, Yoruba, Shona, Zulu * grandmother: many Slavic languages (such as Bulgarian, Russian, Czech and Polish; a doublet of bubbe), Romanian, Yiddish, Japanese * grandfather: Azerbaijani, Zulu (father, grandfather) * baby: Afrikaans, Sinhala, Hungarian These terms often continue to be used by English speakers whose families came from one of these cultures. In some cases, they may become more widely used in localities that have been heavily influenced by an immigrant community. Some senses were extensions of one of these family terms in the original languages ("old woman" from "grandmother", "holy man" from "father"). The "cake" sense comes through French, from Polish baba (“old woman”). The Middle Eastern word baba (as in Ali Baba) is rather a term of endearment, and is ultimately derived from Persian بابا (bābā, “father”) (from Old Persian pāpa; as opposed to the Arabic words أَبُو (ʔabū) and أَب (ʔab); see also Papak), and is linguistically related to the common European word papa and the word pope, having the same Indo-European origin. The Chinese word "baba", meaning father, comes from 爸爸.

Example Sentences

• "The trolley of fresh local cheeses, including the region's pride, mozzarella di bufala, is as attractive as the trolley of classic Neapolitan desserts, including pastiera napolitana (a ricotta cake with orange rind), feather-light baba, and, in mid-March, zeppola di San Giuseppe (whose feast day is March 19), a sweet bun filled with custard and black cherry."
• "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."

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