Word.ws English Dictionary

babery

babery noun: finery of a kind to please a child.

Noun

babery (uncountable)

  1. (obsolete) Finery of a kind to please a child.
    • So have I seen trim books in velvet dight, / With golden leaves, and painted babery / Of silly boys, please unacquainted sight.a. 1587, Philippe Sidnei [i.e., Philip Sidney], “(please specify the folio)”, in [Fulke Greville; Matthew Gwinne; John Florio], editors, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia [The New Arcadia], London...

Origin of babery

Perhaps originally for baboonery. Compare baboon, and also babe.

Questions about babery

What does babery mean?
Babery means finery of a kind to please a child.
What part of speech is babery?
Babery is a noun.

Words near babery in the dictionary

  1. Baber
  2. Babergh
  3. Babers
  4. Baberses
  5. Baberton
  6. babery
  7. babes
  8. babes in arms
  9. babes in the wood
  10. babes in the woods
  11. babes-in-a-cradle

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: babery (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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