babery
English edit
Etymology edit
Perhaps originally for baboonery. Compare baboon, and also babe.
Noun edit
babery (uncountable)
- (obsolete) Finery of a kind to please a child.
- a. 1587, Philippe Sidnei [i.e., Philip Sidney], “(please specify the page number)”, in Fulke Greville, Matthew Gwinne, and John Florio, editors, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia [The New Arcadia], London: […] [John Windet] for William Ponsonbie, published 1590, →OCLC; republished in Albert Feuillerat, editor, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia (Cambridge English Classics: The Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney; I), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: University Press, 1912, →OCLC:
- So have I seen trim books in velvet dight, / With golden leaves, and painted babery / Of silly boys, please unacquainted sight.
References edit
- “babery”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.