Word.ws English Dictionary

bauble

[ˈbɒbəɫ]UK[ˈbɔːbəɫ]

bauble noun: a cheap showy ornament or piece of jewellery; a gewgaw.

Noun

bauble (plural baubles)

  1. A cheap showy ornament or piece of jewellery; a gewgaw.
    • […] as to the bauble on which the chief proof rests, if she had earnestly desired it, I should have willingly given it to her, so much do I esteem and value her.1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], chapter 8, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for...
    • Have none before or after him staked all their treasure of life, as a savage does his land and possessions against a draught of the fair-skins’ fire-water, or a couple of bauble eyes?1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 6, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850...
  2. (broadly, figuratively) Anything trivial and worthless.
    • His hind quarters were likewise short, and not racinglike, and taken as a specimen of the horse, he was a mere bauble when looked at by the side of an English race-horse, much less a hunter.1841, The New Monthly Magazine and Humorist, page 186
  3. A small shiny spherical decoration, commonly put on Christmas trees.
    • Harry dreamed he was back in the D.A. room. Cho was accusing him of luring him there under false pretenses; she said that he had promised her a hundred and fifty Chocolate Frog cards if she showed up. Harry protested....Cho shouted, "Cedric gave me loads of Chocolate Frog cards, look!" And she...2003, J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Scholastic Press, page 462
  4. A club or sceptre carried by a jester.

bauble meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada

bauble in Urdu

کھلونا

bauble in Bengali

তুচ্ছ, সস্তা অলঙ্কার, চাকচিক্যময় কিন্তু মূল্যহীন বস্তু

bauble in Malayalam

trinket, knick-knack, ornament
മുക്കുപണ്ടം, പൂച്ചുപണ്ടം, ക്ഷുദ്രാഭരണം, വിലകുറഞ്ഞ പദാർത്ഥം, കളിപ്പണ്ടം, ഉരുപ്പടി

bauble in Kannada

ಅಗ್ಗದ ಒಡವೆ, ಅಗ್ಗದ ಅಲಂಕಾರ
More languagesFewer languages
bauble in Assamese
মণি moni

Forms of bauble

pluralbaubles

Origin of bauble

From Middle English bable, babel, babull, babulle, from Old French babel, baubel (“trinket, child's toy”), most likely a reduplication of bel, ultimately from Latin bellus (“pretty”).

Words formed from bauble

Questions about bauble

What does bauble mean?
Bauble means a cheap showy ornament or piece of jewellery; a gewgaw.
What is bauble in Urdu?
Bauble in Urdu is کھلونا. See Bauble meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is bauble?
Bauble is a noun.
How do you pronounce bauble?
Bauble is pronounced [ˈbɔːbəɫ] (UK).
What is the plural of bauble?
The plural of bauble is baubles.

Words near bauble in the dictionary

  1. Baubau
  2. baubee
  3. baubees
  4. baubella
  5. baubellum
  6. bauble
  7. baublery
  8. baubles
  9. Baublitz
  10. Baublitzes
  11. baubon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bauble (page history and authors); bauble (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); bauble (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); bauble (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); bauble (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); মণি (Assamese) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-bauble.ogg.

Cite this entry: “bauble.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bauble. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.