babe
Plural: babes
Noun
- A baby or an infant; a naive or innocent person.
- a very young child (birth to 1 year) who has not yet begun to walk or talk
- (slang) sometimes used as a term of address for attractive young women
- A baby or infant; a very young human or animal.
- An attractive person, especially a young woman.
- Darling (term of endearment).
Examples
- Hey, babe, how's about you and me getting together?
- I was a mere babe in the woods during my first Scrabble tournament.
- She's a real babe!
- These events came to pass when he was but a babe.
Origin / Etymology
From Middle English babe, a variant of earlier baban, perhaps from Old English *baba (“boy, child”), from Proto-West Germanic *babō, from Proto-Germanic *babô, reduplicated variant of *ba-, *bō- (“father, brother, close male relation”).
cognates and related terms
Related to Old Frisian bobba (“child”) (whence North Frisian babbe, babb, babe (“child”)), 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 mutation of maban, a diminutive of mab (“son”), is probably rather a borrowing from English. Cognate also with English bub.
Synonyms
baby, infant, sister, See: Thesaurus:beautiful woman, child, darling, dear, doll, fox, hottie, love, sweetheart
Scrabble Score: 8
babe: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordbabe: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
babe: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary