Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A baby; an infant.
  • noun An innocent or naive person.
  • noun Slang A young woman, especially one considered sexually attractive.
  • noun Informal Sweetheart; dear. Used as a term of endearment.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An infant; a young child of either sex.
  • noun A child's doll.
  • noun One who is like a babe in any respect; a person of infantine or childish character or ability: as, he is a mere babe in that man's hands.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun An infant; a young child of either sex; a baby.
  • noun A doll for children.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A baby or infant; a very young human or animal.
  • noun slang An attractive person, especially a young woman.
  • noun Darling (term of endearment).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a very young child (birth to 1 year) who has not yet begun to walk or talk
  • noun (slang) sometimes used as a term of address for attractive young women

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English babe, perhaps a variant of earlier baban or representing Old English *baba (“boy, child”), from Proto-Germanic *babô, reduplicated variant of *ba-, *bō- (“father, brother, close male relation”), related to Old Frisian bobba ("child"), Swedish dialectal babbe ("little boy"), 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 mutated from maban diminutive of mab ("son"), is probably rather a borrowing from the English.

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Examples

  • I. ii.118 (294,1) like a babe] That is a _weeping babe_.

    Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies Samuel Johnson 1746

  • Among those risking romantic rejection and public humiliation is a ski instructor keen to propose in salopettes, a sailor who uses the word "babe" as punctuation, and a civil servant who stores his engagement ring in a laundry tablet dispersal bag.

    It's a good week for … Romance 2012

  • He watched the word babe hit her across the face like a hard slap, along with more he didn’t mean, but somehow couldn’t stop from saying.

    Game For Anything Bella Andre 2010

  • There are far more lude and inappropriate visuals seconds away on the very computer we all are reading this on, that if a fully clothed booth babe is of grave concern, lock out Field and Stream's web site so the aforementioned young girls can't see the naked fish either.

    Why I Hate the Booth Babe Story, a Guest Editorial by Holly A. 2010

  • There are far more lude and inappropriate visuals seconds away on the very computer we all are reading this on, that if a fully clothed booth babe is of grave concern, lock out Field and Stream's web site so the aforementioned young girls can't see the naked fish either.

    Why I Hate the Booth Babe Story, a Guest Editorial by Holly A. 2010

  • I'm guessing behind every booth babe is a well dress and informative representative for each company ready to answer questions about each product.

    Booth Babes? 2009

  • I'm new to this mom thing (my babe is 4mo), but I'm already getting fed up with the pressure to always have my crap together.

    The Bad Mother Manifesto | Her Bad Mother 2009

  • I'm guessing behind every booth babe is a well dress and informative representative for each company ready to answer questions about each product.

    Booth Babes? 2009

  • So if a babe is wearing a shirt saying, "he's my BR BITCH", she probably has serious issues.

    The tops, the names and the adventurer 2008

  • Personally, my babe is still only 1 1/2 but another mum breastfeeding in front of me without a covering of some sort would make me uncomfortable.

    Under The Blanket | Her Bad Mother 2008

Comments

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  • That'll do, pig.

    January 27, 2008

  • Means "priest" in SiSwati.

    July 13, 2009