Babushka

noun

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An Eastern European old woman.

    "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."

  2. 2
    a woman's headscarf folded into a triangle and tied under the chin; worn by Russian peasant women wordnet
  3. 3
    An Eastern European old woman.; A Russian grandmother.

    "I tell thee what, Babushka! I have no time to waste with thee in idle words."

  4. 4
    A traditional floral headscarf worn by an Eastern European woman, tied under the chin.

    "White Parian bust of smiling Russian peasant woman - with babushka covering head, lovely detail work, 21½″ tall"

  5. 5
    A Russian doll, a matryoshka.

    "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."

Etymology

Borrowed from Russian ба́бушка (bábuška, “grandmother”), from Old East Slavic бабушка (babuška, “grandmother, midwife”). First attested in the 1830s.

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