babushka

Noun

babushka (plural babushkas or babushki)

1. An Eastern European old woman.
   • Yet, much as I loved to listen to it, standing there in the heat of all the lighted candles and dressed in my heavy shuba and felt boots, I invariably, halfway through the service, would begin to feel an intolerable pain across my shoulders which would spread across my back, gradually getting...1984, Eugenie Fraser, “Before the Storm”, in The House by the Dvina: A Russian Childhood, Mainstream Publishing, →ISBN, pages 126–127
   • There was a 92-year-old babushka who was injured, and we put her on the stretcher and helped get her out.2023 May 14, Marc Santora, “As Ukraine Makes Inroads in Bakhmut, Devastation Still Reigns”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 27 Aug 2023

   Synonyms:

   baba

   1. A Russian grandmother.
      • I tell thee what, Babushka! I have no time to waste with thee in idle words.1834, Michael Zakosken, translated by “a Russian Lady of high rank and her two amiable daughters”, edited by Frederic Chamier, The Young Muscovite, or the Poles in Russia, volume I, London: Cochrane...
      • The young coachman […] not knowing how to treat the old woman: whether with deference as it seemed to him proper, because the old woman wore the same kind of attire as his babushka and the mother of his house did […]1899, Lyof N. Tolstoï, “The Dekabrists: A Romance”, in [unknown], transl., Master and Man; The Kreutzer Sonata; Dramas (The Novels and Other Works of Lyof N. Tolstoï), New York, N.Y.: Charles...
2. A traditional floral headscarf worn by an Eastern European woman, tied under the chin.
   • White Parian bust of smiling Russian peasant woman - with babushka covering head, lovely detail work, 21½″ tall1959 September, HOBBIES—The Magazine for Collectors, volume 64, number 7, Chicago: Lightner Publishing Corporation, page 80
   • “Say hello to old Stanley,” he called as she pattered down the steps into the street, flung a babushka over her license plate and screeched away down Telegraph.1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 5, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 79
3. A Russian doll, a matryoshka.
   • The present inhabitants of the Kremlin […] have rigged the Constitution in a series of articles which fit into each other like those wooden babushkas Russian peasants used to make, so that, as one shell after another is removed, the effective power finally resides in the tiny babushka in the inmost...1948, Theodore Dryden, “Remarks on the Constitution of the Mongolian People's Republic”, in Dwight Macdonald, editor, politics, volume 5, number 3, New York: Politics Publishing Co., archived from...