babbitt

English

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.

Pronunciation

Etymology 1

Named for American inventor Isaac Babbitt (1799–1862)

Noun

babbitt (plural babbitts)

  1. Babbitt metal.
Translations
Babbitt metal

Verb

babbitt (third-person singular simple present babbitts, present participle babbitting, simple past and past participle babbitted)

  1. (transitive) To line with Babbitt metal to reduce friction.

Etymology 2

Named after the title character in Sinclair Lewis' 1922 novel, Babbit. Also popularised by the George and Ira Gershwin song "The Babbitt and the Bromide," featured first in the 1927 musical "Funny Face" and later in the film Ziegfeld Follies (1945).

Alternative forms

Babbitt

Noun

babbitt (plural babbitts)

  1. A person who subscribes complacently to materialistic middle-class ideals
    • 1930 The Literary digest, Volume 105, Funk and Wagnalls, p21
      One speaks of a babbitt habit, a babbitt era. Nothing is more true. America recognized itself in Babbitt, it demurred, but it also admired.
    • 2002 Tamkang review, Volume 33, Tamkang College of Arts and Sciences, p158
      [...] a "babbitt" is a person full of self-confident bluster who is nevertheless a narrowminded philistine and a hypocrite.
    • 2003 William Hyland, George Gershwin: a new biography, Greenwood Publishing Group, p116
      Ira relished telling the story that Fred Astaire took him aside and said he knew what a babbitt was, but what was a bromide?

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Last modified on 13 January 2013, at 03:56