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  1. bauble love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A small, showy ornament of little value; a trinket.
  2. n. Archaic A mock scepter carried by a court jester.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. A child's plaything or toy.
  2. n. A trifling piece of finery; that which is gay or showy without real value; a gewgaw.
  3. n. A trifle; a thing of little or no value; a childish or foolish matter or affair.
  4. Trifling; insignificant; contemptible.
  5. Also spelled bawble.
  6. To trifle.
  7. n. Primarily, a sort of scepter or staff of office, the attribute of Folly personified, carried by the jesters of kings and great lords in the middle ages, and down to the seventeenth century. It is generally represented as crowned with the head of a fool or zany, wearing a party-colored hood with asses' ears, and with a ring of little bells, like sleigh-bells. At the other end there was sometimes a ball or bladder inflated with air, with which to belabor people. Also spelled bawble.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A cheap showy ornament piece of jewellery; a gewgaw.
  2. n. A club or sceptre carried by a jester.
  3. n. A small shiny spherical decoration, commonly put on Christmas trees.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. A trifling piece of finery; a gewgaw; that which is gay and showy without real value; a cheap, showy plaything.
  2. n. obsolete The fool's club.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a mock scepter carried by a court jester
  2. n. cheap showy jewelry or ornament on clothing

Etymologies

  1. From Old French baubel ("trinket, child's toy"), most likely a reduplication of bel, ultimately from Latin bellus ("pretty"). (Wiktionary)
  2. Middle English babel, from Old French, plaything. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

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Lists

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Comments

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  • alguien This word brings to mind those blown-glass sphere-things that float. I don't know what those sphere-things are actually called, but they should be called baubles. Mar 28, 2007

  • brtom Perish the baubles! Your person is all I desire.
    Goldsmith, She Stoops, II Jan 10, 2007

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‘bauble’ has been looked up 3733 times, loved by 4 people, added to 75 lists, commented on 3 times, and has a Scrabble score of 10.