Dictionaries › English

baboon

Pronunciation: /bəˈbuːn/

The English word “baboon” has 3 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. An Old World monkey of the genus Papio, having dog-like muzzles and large canine teeth, cheek pouches, a short tail, and naked callosities on the buttocks.
  2. A foolish, stupid or incompetent person.
  3. A black person.

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English babewin, baboin, from Old French babouin, from baboue (“grimace; muzzle”) (whence French babouin), from an imitative origin. According to Oxford English Dictionary, it was an imitative base *bab-, which is in turn from the (reduplicated) syllable ba, characteristic of early infantile vocalization (and expressive of the movement of the lips in speech). French babouin…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “baboon” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.