1850.—"If instruction were sought for from them (the Mohammedan historians) we should no longer hear bombastic Baboos, enjoying under our Government the highest degree of personal liberty ... rave about patriotism, and the degradation of their present position."—Sir H. M. Elliot, Orig. Preface to Mahom. Historians of India, in Dowson's ed., I. xxii.
c. 1866.
"But I'd sooner be robbed by a tall man who showed me a yard of steel,
Than be fleeced by a sneaking Baboo, with a peon and badge at his heel."
Sir A. C. Lyall, The Old Pindaree.
1873.—"The pliable, plastic, receptive Baboo of Bengal eagerly avails himself of this system (of English education) partly from a servile wish to please the Sahib logue, and partly from a desire to obtain a Government appointment."—Fraser's Mag., August, 209.
[1880.—"English officers who have become de-Europeanised from long residence among undomesticated natives.... Such officials are what Lord Lytton calls White Baboos."—Aberigh-Mackay, Twenty-one Days, p. 104.]
N.B.—In Java and the further East bābū means a nurse or female servant (Javanese word).
BABOOL, s. H. babūl, babūr (though often mispronounced bābul, as in two quotations below); also called kīkar. A thorny mimosa common in most parts of India except the Malabar Coast; the Acacia arabica, Willd. The Bhils use the gum as food.
1666.—"L'eau de Vie de ce Païs ... qu'on y boit ordinairement, est faicte de jagre ou sucre noir, qu'on met dans l'eau avec de l'écorce de l'arbre Baboul, pour y donner quelque force, et ensuite on les distile ensemble."—Thevenot, v. 50.