Rockabye
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A soothing rocking motion.
"All the lullabies of the world suggest undulatory movements or rockabyes in the tree tops."
- 1 To rock soothingly. ambitransitive
"“We have a Chopin player in the house,” he said. And with a tiny smile he rockabyed the opening phrase of the Ballade and turned his head to look straight at Katie."
Example
More examples"“We have a Chopin player in the house,” he said. And with a tiny smile he rockabyed the opening phrase of the Ballade and turned his head to look straight at Katie."
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”)).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.