a small cake of leavened dough, sometimes mixed with currants and usually soaked in rum (rum baba)
Word origin
C19: from French, from Polish, literally: old woman
baba in American English
(ˈbɑːbə, French baˈba)
nounWord forms: plural-bas (-bəz, French -ˈba)
a spongelike cake leavened with yeast and often containing raisins, baked in a small mold and then usually soaked with a rum syrup
Word origin
[1820–30; ‹ F ‹ Pol: lit., old woman, peasant woman; the cake was introduced into Franceby the court of the exiled Polish king Stanislaus I]This word is first recorded in the period 1820–30. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: blouse, insider, karma, morphology, tetrapod