rockabye
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: rockabyes
Etymology: From the nursery rhyme Rock-a-bye Baby, previously recorded as "Hush-a-by(e) baby"; blend of rock + lullaby or rock + -abye (as in hush-a-bye, from -a- (connective interfix) + bye (“goodbye, bye-bye”)).
Senses: examples: text: All the lullabies of the world suggest undulatory movements or rockabyes in the tree tops.
ref: 1916, The Pedagogical Seminary, page 98:
text: This is what Eve was thinking as she listened to the dance music swinging like a rockabye hammock hung between the silky strands of[…]
ref: 1937, Pictorial Review:
text: Every forty-five minutes occurred A Laugh, selected sea-chanties were alternately mumbled and roared, and the saddest intermission orchestra I have ever heard fiddled jigs and reels to a rockabye tempo.
ref: 1943, Kappo Phelan, The Commonweal, page 305:
text: Carruthers’ sobs have a rockabye beat.
ref: 1946, The Penguin New Writing, page 177:
text: ROCKABYE HAMMOCK. Grown-ups aren’t the only ones who love the sunny laziness of a hammock, so this one has been designed for children between the ages of four and ten.
ref: 1947 April, House Beautiful, volume 89, number 4, page 77:
text: I have been a rockabye baby sloshed in the sludge of the sea and I have clung with a shell over me waiting a tide to bring me breakfast.
ref: 1965, Carl Sandburg, quotee, Discourse: A Review of the Liberal Arts, page 145:
text: Then, in a rockabye vein, comes Catalina’s white two-piece suit of knit that resembles a baby’s blanket and is trimmed with pink crocheted scalloped edges and tassels wherever there is an edge to decorate.
ref: 1965 January 30, The New Yorker, page 102:
text: Just lie still; just don’t cry; I’ll rock you with a rockabye.
ref: 1983, Midstream, page 55:
text: Debbi will sit and talk for a while, then charge off to breast-feed the baby. Her office features a rockabye-baby device with a fringed top.
ref: 1984, Esquire, page 330:
text: Linda is working her soft soft wet mouth gently against mine, letting me dream her tongue and meanwhile, below, she cups Mr. Genital in her hands and gives the triangle a firm squeeze, a rockabye side-to-side shake.
ref: 1998, Clarence Major, All-Night Visitors, Northeastern University Press, →ISBN, page 211:
text: So the tree house itself could’ve been a celebration of Chad’s birth—the epitome of a rockabye-baby cradle in the tree top?
ref: 2004, Cris Mazza, Homeland, Red Hen Press, →ISBN, page 40:
text: Seed has paired us on the MetroBabe Stroller audio job, designing an interface that works for both toddlers and parents. At the touch of a button, it has to be able to play back rockabyes, current hits packaged as instrumental lullabies for baby, or MetroBabe’s private info station, simply jam-packed with useful information to help guide new parents through the very special hell they’ve signed up for.
ref: 2008, Lauren Beukes, Moxyland, Jacana, →ISBN, page 76:
text: Trains and books and dolly with open eyes
 Creak and creak for Grandpa’s rockabyes
ref: 2009, Thomas A. Nordstrom, Written on Occasion of..., Xlibris, page 101:
text: […]; a Mommy’s arms to enfold with love for a rockabye time or a story;
ref: 2010, Elvera M. Denning, The Lord Knows the Way Through the Wilderness: ... All We Have to Do Is Follow, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 290:
text: The ear, our body’s innate artist, wields the hammer, tip[-]taps the anvil, turns, without trying, the monotonous slammings of water and sand into sweet rockabyes.
ref: 2015, Eric G. Wilson, Keep It Fake: Inventing an Authentic Life, Sarah Crichton Books, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 160:
text: In the eaves, dove coos a rockabye song.
ref: 2018, Candace Pearson, “In the Barn”, in Joanne Randolph, editor, Poems about Nature, Rosen Publishing, →ISBN, page 10:
text: Being a rockabye-baby mom was never my thing.
ref: 2021, Gaylon Finklea Hecker, Marianne Odom, Growing Up in the Lone Star State: Notable Texans Remember Their Childhoods, University of Texas Press, →ISBN:
glosses: A soothing rocking motion.