babushka
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: Borrowed from Russian ба́бушка (bábuška, “grandmother”), from Old East Slavic бабушка (babuška, “grandmother, midwife”). First attested in the 1830s.
Inflected forms:
form: babushkas
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: babushki
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: babooshka
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: baboushka
pos: noun
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: An Eastern European old woman.
pos: noun
examples: Yet, much as I loved to listen to it, standing there in the heat of all the lighted candles and dressed in my heavy shuba and felt boots, I invariably, halfway through the service, would begin to feel an intolerable pain across my shoulders which would spread across my back, gradually getting worse, until in the end I was forced to go to the back of the church and find a corner on a bench especially placed there for all the old babushkas and dedushkas who were also unable to bear the strain of standing throughout the whole service.
There was a 92-year-old babushka who was injured, and we put her on the stretcher and helped get her out.
As a boy, I hand-made pelmeni with my babushka Alla, my hands and face covered in flour as we worked in the cold of my grandparents’ basement in Paterson, New Jersey.
gloss: An Eastern European old woman.
pos: noun
examples: I tell thee what, Babushka! I have no time to waste with thee in idle words.
The young coachman […] not knowing how to treat the old woman: whether with deference as it seemed to him proper, because the old woman wore the same kind of attire as his babushka and the mother of his house did […]
There they were, the devoted babushkas and dedushkas, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers of Bobby’s companions, lugging their bags, their bulging packages and bundles.
“He and my babushka took an angry and confused teenager and taught her how to build herself up into a strong woman.”
gloss: A traditional floral headscarf worn by an Eastern European woman, tied under the chin.
pos: noun
examples: White Parian bust of smiling Russian peasant woman - with babushka covering head, lovely detail work, 21½″ tall
“Say hello to old Stanley,” he called as she pattered down the steps into the street, flung a babushka over her license plate and screeched away down Telegraph.
The crowd falls silent, momentarily stunned, while a heavyset woman in a babushka pushes her way through, broadcasting the news […].
gloss: A Russian doll, a matryoshka.
pos: noun
examples: The present inhabitants of the Kremlin […] have rigged the Constitution in a series of articles which fit into each other like those wooden babushkas Russian peasants used to make, so that, as one shell after another is removed, the effective power finally resides in the tiny babushka in the inmost center.
Related words: babusya
babcia
bubbe
Derived words: babushka doll
babushkaed
Translations:
lang: Afrikaans
word: baboesjka
lang: Afrikaans
word: oumatjie
lang: Bulgarian
word: баба
roman: baba
lang: Chinese Mandarin
word: 老婆婆
roman: lǎopópo
lang: Esperanto
word: maljunulino
lang: Esperanto
word: oldulino
lang: Esperanto
word: maljuna virino
lang: Estonian
word: vanaeit
lang: Russian
word: ба́бушка
roman: bábuška
lang: Russian
word: стару́ха
roman: starúxa
lang: Russian
word: стару́шка
roman: starúška
lang: Spanish
word: anciana
lang: Spanish
word: viejita
lang: Spanish
word: viejecita
lang: Spanish
word: vieja
lang: Spanish
word: señora mayor
lang: Spanish
word: mujer vieja