Word.ws English Dictionary

babu English

babu English proper noun: a variety of Indian English characterized by excessive formality, politeness, ornamentation, and an indirect manner of communication.

Proper noun

babu English (uncountable)

  1. (India) A variety of Indian English characterized by excessive formality, politeness, ornamentation, and an indirect manner of communication.
    • Despite the innocuous-sounding claim that the purpose of his article was ‘to provide a few notes on the characteristics of English used to-day by the educated Indian’ (Goffin 1934: 20), Goffin’s text is very much in the ‘Babu English’ tradition, that is, it derides the way in which Indians used...2014, James Lambert, “Diachronic stability in Indian English lexis”, in World Englishes, page 116

Forms of babu English

alternative formBabu English
alternative form (dated)Baboo English
alternative form (dated)baboo English

Questions about babu English

What does babu English mean?
Babu English means a variety of Indian English characterized by excessive formality, politeness, ornamentation, and an indirect manner of communication.
What part of speech is babu English?
Babu English is a proper noun.

Words near babu English in the dictionary

  1. Babruysk
  2. babs
  3. Babson
  4. BABT
  5. babu
  6. babu English
  7. Babua
  8. babuche
  9. babuches
  10. babudom
  11. Babuganj

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: babu English (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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Cite this entry: “babu English.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/babu_english. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.