BABOO, s. Beng. and H. Bābū [Skt. vapra, 'a father']. Properly a term of respect attached to a name, like Master or Mr., and formerly in some parts of Hindustan applied to certain persons of distinction. Its application as a term of respect is now almost or altogether confined to Lower Bengal (though C. P. Brown states that it is also used in S. India for 'Sir, My lord, your Honour'). In Bengal and elsewhere, among Anglo-Indians, it is often used with a slight savour of disparagement, as characterizing a superficially cultivated, but too often effeminate, Bengali. And from the extensive employment of the class, to which the term was applied as a title, in the capacity of clerks in English offices, the word has come often to signify 'a native clerk who writes English.'
1781.—"I said.... From my youth to this day I am a servant to the English. I have never gone to any Rajahs or Bauboos nor will I go to them."—Depn. of Dooud Sing, Commandant. In Narr. of Insurn. at Banaras in 1781. Calc. 1782. Reprinted at Roorkee, 1853. App., p. 165.
1782.—"Cantoo Baboo" appears as a subscriber to a famine fund at Madras for 200 Sicca Rupees.—India Gazette, Oct. 12.
1791.
"Here Edmund was making a monstrous ado,
About some bloody Letter and Conta Bah-Booh."[[31]]
Letters of Simkin the Second, 147.
1803.—"... Calling on Mr. Neave I found there Baboo Dheep Narrain, brother to Oodit Narrain, Rajah at Benares."—Lord Valentia's Travels, i. 112.
1824.—"... the immense convent-like mansion of some of the more wealthy Baboos...."—Heber, i. 31, ed. 1844.
1834.—"The Baboo and other Tales, descriptive of Society in India."—Smith & Elder, London. (By Augustus Prinsep.)