Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A baby; an infant.
- n. An innocent or naive person.
- n. Slang A young woman.
- n. Informal Sweetheart; dear. Used as a term of endearment.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An infant; a young child of either sex.
- n. A child's doll.
- n. 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.
Wiktionary
- n. A baby or infant; a very young human or animal.
- n. slang An attractive person, especially a young woman.
- n. Darling (term of endearment).
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. An infant; a young child of either sex; a baby.
- n. A doll for children.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a very young child (birth to 1 year) who has not yet begun to walk or talk
- n. (slang) sometimes used as a term of address for attractive young women
Etymologies
- 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. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“I. ii.118 (294,1) like a babe] That is a _weeping babe_.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.
“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.”
“I'm guessing behind every booth babe is a well dress and informative representative for each company ready to answer questions about each product.”
“So if a babe is wearing a shirt saying, "he's my BR BITCH", she probably has serious issues.”
“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.”
“Hah, the last babe is holding a spray painted nerf longshot .......”
“My babe is now 15 months old and I am JUST beginning to stomach the idea of another pregnancy (beginning!).”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘babe’.
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Noteworthy Words
Here I have in mind a list of words that could be spelled with only the letters A, B, C, D, E, F, and G--and thus could also be played as a tune on the piano.
face, ace, bag, cage, bad, fad, fade, fee, gee, beg, fed, deaf and 98 more...
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®emovies
Movies or TV shows where the titles are also common words, generally one-word titles.
lost, alien, bug, elephant, siege, gladiator, flock, captivity, piano, roots, freaks, moonstruck and 269 more...
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Words that are also movies
Unabashedly stolen from a comment made by courier12.
vertigo, serendipity, casablanca, psycho, jaws, fantasia, stagecoach, network, rocky, giant, platoon, unforgiven and 285 more...
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The Pain of Texting
Words that are a pain in the ass to type in on a numerical keypad on a cell phone because they have consecutive letters that share the same button:
2 - ABC
3 - DEF
4 - GHI...defcon, hi, no, attitude, xylophone, on, monday, monkey, mono, dig, back, babble and 212 more...
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Words Heard Too Often In Songs
Words overused in modern pop music.
Also see ruzuzu's list: Words that should be heard in songs more often.love, heart, dance, dancefloor, down, take, want, night, fight, baby, like, ooooh and 136 more...
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Let Me Call You Sweetheart
Or honey, or baby, or ...
(A Valentine's Day list.)amoret, bonnilasse, ladybird, leikin, leman, love-lass, Phyllis, pout, sweetness, munchkin, darling, sayang and 87 more...
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Twitter faves
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favourite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
niglets, aw, flakey, shiznit, thatch, sexy, bummers, hotty, eargasms, ratchetry, weird, fab and 593 more... -
diioxyde's Words
macabre, egypt, egyptology, queen, love, sex, sister, lover, web, cobweb, line, circle and 223 more...
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Twitter favorites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favorite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
unfathomably, glice, cuh, fab, ciggaty, doll, thuggin, oxymoronic, pineapple, succubutt, griming, cheeky and 3027 more... -
ttobba's Words
graph, amore, labrador, sun, boreal, norsk, coffee, cafe, pekin, peking, train, rail and 97 more...
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Slang words of Irish origin according...
Compare the etymologies of these words as given in the OED with the Gaelic backgrounders in this book, How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads (Counterpunch, 2007). Awai...
smack, snazzy, pussy, geek, dork, dude, smudge, snap, slugger, slum, scam, slew and 102 more...
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Pigs on Parade
pig-words: including, but not limited to, famous pigs in film and fiction, historical pigs of note, pig breeds, and assorted porcine terms
babe, the empress of bl..., freddy the pig, piglet, miss piggy, old major, snowball, napoleon, squealer, wilbur, porky pig, petunia pig and 89 more...
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junestag's Words
postmodernism, cat, fish, rabbit, dell, coffee, elearning, mazda, php, mysql, flash, blogger and 755 more...
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It's a Man's World
Help me get to the bottom of this
pussy, bitchslap, dildo, twat, bimbo, the man, cunt, douchebag, cocksucker, the nuts, the balls, bitch and 20 more...
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Book of People
Nouns to denote types of people and their natures. Should be able to sum up a person in that one word.
cove, chap, gentleman, lady, lass, lad, flaneur, dude, pal, chum, homie, rudeboy and 41 more...
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Gag on My Big Big Love
shnookums, honey bun, lover, honey, dear, baby, darling, sweety, sweetheart, sweetums, lovey, hon and 8 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for babe.
tbtabby Means "priest" in SiSwati. Jul 13, 2009
sionnach That'll do, pig. Jan 26, 2008