babooness
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: baboonesses
Etymology: From baboon + -ess.
Senses: examples: text: The aunt is a skinny old hag, with sharp eyes, a great deal of frizzy grey hair, that looks like a tangled mass of tow on a distaff, a turned-up nose, with large nostrils, and two rows of very perfect grinning teeth, like a monkey’s. Indeed, she principally resembles a middle-aged babooness; she is active, strong, and upright in her figure, about fifty years old.
ref: 1854 January, “St. Januarius’ to St. Constantius”, in Bentley’s Miscellany, volume XXXV, London: Richard Bentley, […], page 139:
text: ‘Fred.’ need n’t send us any monkeys: we are afraid of them. A babooness fell in love with us once, at Barnum’s Museum: in fact, she became so much attached to us, that it was as much as we could do to get away from the affectionate ‘creetur!’
ref: 1859 March, “Editor’s Table”, in The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, volume LIII, number 3, New York, N.Y.: John A. Gray, […], page 328:
text: Rev. G[ilbert]. Haven, in the Christian Advocate, reports a visit to the slave quarters connected with the estate, from which we extract the following:— / “[…] I asked the mother, (dam, perhaps I ought to say, madam somebody will some time say,) ‘Who do you belong to?’ ‘Mrs. Lee.’ ‘Are you a member of the church?’ ‘Yes, the Baptist.’ ‘How many children have you?’ (Pardon me for using the word children; she talked and acted so much like a Christian mother, I didn’t like to say ‘young ones.’) ‘Seven.’ ‘Do you expect to be free?’ ‘Yes, sir; in about a year our time is up.’ ‘Do you want to be free?’ ‘Yes, sir, I do.’ ‘What for?’ ‘Because I do.’ Didn’t that reason show the woman as much as the babooness? Not being acquainted with the latter’s method of reasoning, I cannot be sure, but it struck me as a very familiar and conclusive answer.[…]”
ref: 1861 August 23, “Gen. Lee’s Negro Quarters”, in Lewiston Daily Evening Journal, volume 1, number 107, Lewiston, Me., page [2], columns 3–4:
text: […] these same wild dogs being in the habit of constantly harassing any unlucky baboon or babooness that they found alone, besides having stolen into the village of the baboons at night, when dogs can see better than baboons, and killed and eaten several baboonies who were sleeping with their mothers.
ref: 1864, “King Lion”, in S[amuel] O[rchart] Beeton, editor, The Boy’s Own Volume of Fact, Fiction, History, and Adventure, London: S. O. Beeton, […], chapter XXIII (I attend the great assembly—The lions think my rifle a portion of myself—I resign the office of royal archiver, &c.—[…]), pages 476–477:
text: She is not your wife, she is not even a woman; she was not in her conception divine, she is purely animal; she is the babooness of the land of Nod, she is the female of Cain: slay her!
ref: 1873, Alexandre Dumas fils, “Advice to a Son; Love, Marriage, etc.”, in George Vandenhoff, transl., Man-Woman; or, The Temple, the Hearth, the Street, Philadelphia, Pa.; New York, N.Y.; Boston, Mass., page 106:
text: Alas for the days when my baboon ancestral / In Japanese woods from the lithe limb was pendant, / Instructing, kind hearted, each babooness vestal / How best to achieve for herself a descendant.
ref: 1882 March 3, “The Devil’s Dictionary”, in The Wasp, volume VIII, number 292, San Francisco, Calif., page 134, column 3:
text: Saturday was always a holiday, and each of us had a barrowful of nuts as pocket-money, so most of the fellows used to spend their time guzzling at the tuck-shop, which was kept by a lame old babooness in a little clump of bushes not far off; and a nice business it must have been to her, for her customers generally stole twice as much as they bought!
ref: 1883, Ascott R. Hope [pseudonym; Robert Hope Moncrieff], “The Day after the Holidays”, in Evenings Away from Home: A Modern Miscellany of Entertainment for Young Masters and Misses, London: John Hogg, […], pages 188–189:
text: Uttering plaintive little cries, the “babooness” trotted back, sniffing the ground as though trying to find the trail of the lost one, and, having arrived opposite the tree which protected the two hunters, she stopped, and seemed to be staring straight at it.
ref: 1909, H. W. G. Hyrst [pseudonym; Sidney Harry Wright], “Adventures among the Great Monkeys of the South and South-East”, in Adventures among Wild Beasts: Romantic Incidents & Perils of Travel, Sport, and Exploration throughout the World, Philadelphia, Pa.: J. B. Lippincott Company; London: Seeley & Co. Limited, page 110:
text: According to the jar-us theory of the descent of man which I read not long ago, and which jarred me considerably, Almighty God made the first baboons in the Garden of Eden. Adam was the baboons^([sic]) and Eve was the babooness, and God commanded them not to eat of the fruit of one particular tree—probably a cocoanut tree—but the serpent tempted them and they did eat.
ref: 1909 January 2, Ricardo, “Vagaries of Pseudo Scientists”, in The Intermountain Catholic, volume 10, number 12, Salt Lake City, Ut.; Denver, Colo., page 5, column 3:
text: I WUZ out ter de Parker Karnival Kumpany’s layout terday, and say, bo, you orter see all de anymules wot dey got. Lines, tagers, monks, baboonesses; everyting wot dey is in de anymule line is dere.
ref: 1912 April 5, “Mike Huff’s Weather”, in The Leavenworth Post, volume VII, number 198, Leavenworth, Kan., page 1, column 4:
text: No Hags were there to sympathize, / So Eve grew pale and thin— / Until she called, to hear her lies, / The Baboonesses in. / The Baboons—who were only men— / They got it hot and soon; / They sympathized with Adam then— / They did, to a baboon. […] And so to-day, you’ll find it true, / Where pampered wives are found, / They lie about their husbands to / The Baboonesses round. / They leave the broken plates and let / The fowls roost on the shelves, / Till men (they’re only baboons yet) / Fall out amongst themselves. / The human Baboonesses stir / The muck of married life, / And force the poisoned cup on her— / “The poor ill-treated wife”! / Until she takes the case to court, / Assisted to the tune / Of dirty Costs by any sort / Of legalized baboon.
ref: 1917 June, Henry Lawson, edited by Colin Roderick, Henry Lawson: Collected Verse, volumes 3 (1910–1922), Angus and Robertson, published 1969, pages 228–229, lines 49–56 and 65–80:
text: But the uther nite I bloze into the Savoy Theayter to see these heer ejakated munkeys and baboons […] I cooden’t notis no striking rezemblance between Marry the acktoress and Marry the babooness, but it mite of bin becauz I was prejidist.
ref: 1922, The Violinist, page 36:
text: However, finding a lovely for a male baboon isn’t so easy, and it may be some time before a suitable one can be discovered. Even then, the matter of a dowry will have to be arranged. So, it appears that Tommie, however lonely, will have to spend a few more months in his bachelor quarters before the sunshine of a babooness’ company will come to cheer his solitude.
ref: 1938 September 11, Frank Drake, “Tommie, Bachelor Baboon, To Get Mate: Zoo Officials To Brighten Life of Veteran (and Grumpy) Inmate”, in The Atlanta Constitution, volume LXXI, number 91, Atlanta, Ga., page four A:
text: Picasso, among his superb illustrations to Buffon’s ‘Natural History’ has just such a baboon that is a marvel of exact observation and of insight. And they treat their females rough. The babooness is kept in her right place, that is to say she lets the poor male show off because she knows that she has something she can trade for what the male has fought for.
ref: 1950, Alan Houghton Brodrick, Pillars of Hercules: The Iberian Scene, Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers) Ltd, page 46:
text: “There was a blue baboon,” I might begin, / “Who opened a swank saloon,” he’d continue, / “In fact, it was a salon,” I’d say, / “Where the elite conversed with élan,” / “About topics essential to man,” / “And the baboonesses ate flan,” / “And gossiped like devious hens,” / “And felt pure and religious and cleansed.”
ref: 1990, Kingfisher, page 76:
text: Run forever and a day the camcorder tape of L.A. cops beating that black thug, who has now sold his life story to a film company, but keep the ferocious antics of those Detroit baboonesses under wraps.
ref: 1991 August, “[Inklings] Selective TV News”, in Instauration, volume 16, number 9, page 19, column 2:
text: Consider the baboon in his cage. Watch how he dons his virility to please his babooness, see how he beats his chest like jungle drums, observe how he struts with head held high like the colonel of a parachute regiment. (He strode round the room, hammering on his chest to be a baboon. With head held high, he looked elegant and innocent, young and carefree.) Then he rattles the bars of his cage, and the melting, captivated babooness realizes that he is a brute, that he is assertive, that he has Character, that she can rely on him.
ref: 1995, Albert Cohen, translated by David Coward, Belle du Seigneur, Viking, →ISBN, page 354:
text: Old lionesses and baboonesses live for only a few years after they stop reproducing, long enough just to ensure that their last-born offspring receive the mothering they need.
ref: 2009, David P. Barash, Judith Eve Lipton, “[The Menopause Mystery] Good Grandmothers, Part I”, in How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories: Evolutionary Enigmas, New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, page 159:
text: When the only thing that gets done is Boucicault or Uncle Tom or their ilk, then it’s slander, and the fact that both plays were so popular, made so much money, makes the case that the appetite for Black baboons and baboonesses is insatiable. […] In one sense, the tragic mulatto heroine is baboon—babooness, if you will—since she has to deny, or at least denigrate, her Blackness in order to be tragic.
ref: 2020, Clifford Mason, Macbeth in Harlem: Black Theater in America from the Beginning to Raisin in the Sun, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, →ISBN:
synonyms: babuina
glosses: A female baboon.