Talk:babby

Etymology
A word misspelled so often that it started being used to make fun of stupid questions, particularly those with poor spelling, on web forums. http://www.somethingawful.com/flash/shmorky/babby.swf
 * External Reference

It's real
I've seen 'babby' in old literature ... definitely not just a misspelling. But yes, I'm familiar with the Internet meme as well (as of today). Soap 00:52, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
 * e.g. Sean O'Faolain's The Trout uses "cry babby" at one point. Soap 17:27, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Btw, one version of the internet meme goes like this: Yes, but...how is babby formed? (Probably satire and parody of little kids' questions.) OjdvQ9fNJWl (talk) 20:07, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The pronunciation exists in Yorkshire as a colloquial variant, so I assume when it's written it's spelled babby, not baby. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:11, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

the word "babby" to mean baby is spoken aloud in 1973 in S01E01 of the UK TV series "Last of the Summer Wine", a show which is set in Yorkshire. (the English subtitle also spells it "babby")

The spelling babby appears in the 1934 Funk & Wagnall's dictionary with two senses to mean both baby and baby doll. It appears in (Merriam) Webster's Third International as "dialect variant of BABY"

although the internet got excited about "how is babby formed", since the author of that comment remains anonymous, it seems safer to assume they were familiar with the dialect word rather than coining a term or making an error. 207.237.14.175 20:43, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Regional distribution
Checking three volumes of the old English Dialect Dictionary, I see examples from Ayr[shire] (2), Cumberland, Derbyshire, Devonshire (4), Gloucestershire, Lakeland, Lancashire (4), Leicestershire (3), n. Lincolnshire (2) and s. Lincolnshire, Northumberland, the Orkney Islands, Pem[brokeshire?], Shropshire (3), Somersetshire, s. Staffordshire (2), Warwickshire, Worcestershire, n. Yorkshire and w. Yorkshire (4), and possibly other places. The entry on babby itself notes "BABBY, sb. In gen. dial, use in all the n. counties to Der. Also in War. Wor. Hrf. Glo. Dev. Cor. [...] A baby." - -sche (discuss) 04:26, 30 August 2018 (UTC)