baba

Noun

1. A kind of sponge cake soaked in rum-flavoured syrup.
   • 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),...
2. A grandmother.
   • My baba, Ksenia Dubinsky, tells me that my education makes her proud. - 1993, Karen Dubinsky, Improper Advances: Rape and Heterosexual Conflict in Ontario, 1880-1929, University of Chicago Press:
   • 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...
   • As we made eye contact, I slowly began to wonder if she was Baba. I did not know my grandmother though I'd spoken with her several times on the telephone; - 2004, MaryBeth Bond, editor, A Woman's Europe: True Stories:
3. An old woman, especially a traditional old woman from an Eastern European culture.
   • Only two women, typical "babas" (peasant women) in the house from which I got my quilt and bedcloth, could be coaxed to pose; - 1914, Russell Sage Foundation, Wage-earning Pittsburgh:
   • Laura hadn't known that anyone's mother could look like that, like the babas you sometimes saw downtown, bandaged in kerchiefs and aprons, sitting toothless in stockinged feet on small verandahs, peeling potatoes or...
   • According to some, new volunteers are becoming more difficult to recruit and there are dark suggestions that 'money is being made on the backs of the babas', the dedicated, but ageing ladies who still spend countless...
4. A father.
   • The first time I signed my exercise I wrote "Pisistratus Caxton" in my best round-hand. "And dey call your baba a scholar!" said the Doctor, contemptuously. - 1849, Edward Bulwer Lytton, The Caxtons:
   • "The greatest gift and honor is having you for a daughter. I've missed you so." "I've missed you too, baba." - 1998, Mulan (movie)
   • Okay. Okay. Fine, baba. Let's just do it before something else goes wrong. - 2002, Bend It Like Beckham (movie)
5. A holy man, a spiritual leader.
   • While I was in Port Alberni, three babas came to Canada to raise money ... - 1995, Hugh J.M. Johnston, Tara Singh Bains, The Four Quarters of the Night: The Life-Journey of an Emigrant Sikh:
   • But according to Ray, 'all the babas my uncle knew were genuine. None of them was exposed. They were fairly humble people, not show-offs like the Maharishi ... - 2004, Andrew Robinson, Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye: The...
   • Most babas had little contact with written culture and are not therefore named in books and treatises. - 2006, Suraiya Faroqhi, Subjects Of The Sultan: Culture And Daily Life In The Ottoman Empire:
6. A baby, child.
   • That is to say, if I do not take care, I shall go on calling my darling 'Baba' till she is as old as her mamma, and has a dozen Babas of her own. - 1876, Sir George Otto Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay:
   • For my child is dead—my baba is dead! - 1904, Rudyard Kipling, Traffics and Discoveries:
7. In baby talk, often used for a variety of words beginning with b, such as bottle or blanket.
   • Oh, it's storytime! Let me get my baba. - 2004, House (TV, episode 1.14)