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Lit., gate; -- a title given to the founder of Babism, and taken from that of Bab-ud-Din, assumed by him.

A kind of plum cake.

To line with Babbitt metal.

A soft white alloy of variable composition (as a nine parts of tin to one of copper, or of fifty parts of tin to five of antimony and one of copper) used in bearings to diminish friction.

To utter words indistinctly or unintelligibly; to utter inarticulate sounds; as a child babbles.

Babble. Hawthorne.

An idle talker; an irrational prater; a teller of secrets. Great babblers, or talkers, are not fit for trust. L'Estrange.

Babble. [Obs.] Sir T. More

An infant; a young child of either sex; a baby.

Babyhood. [R.] Udall.

f Shinar, where the confusion of languages took place. Therefore is the name of it called Babel. Gen. xi. 9.

Finery of a kind to please a child. [Obs.] "Painted babery." Sir P. Sidney.

A baboon. [Obs.] B. Jonson.

The lesser whitethroat of Europe; -- called also babbling warbler.

A mineral occurring in triclinic crystals approaching pyroxene in angle, and of a greenish black color. It is a silicate of iron, manganese, and lime.

A large hoglike quadruped (Sus, or Porcus, babirussa) of the East Indies, sometimes domesticated; the Indian hog. Its upper canine teeth or tusks are large and recurved.

Like a babe; a childish; babyish. [R.] "Babish imbecility." Drayton. -- Bab"ish*ly, adv. -- Bab"ish*ness, n. [R.]

The doctrine of a modern religious sect, which originated in Persia in 1843, being a mixture of Mohammedan, Christian, Jewish and Parsee elements.

ed, about 1844, by Mirza Ali Mohammed ibn Rabhik (1820 -- 1850), who assumed the title of Bab-ed-Din (Per., Gate of the Faith). Babism is a mixture of Mohammedan, Christian, Jewish, and Parsi elements. This doctrine forbids concubinage and polygamy, and frees women from many of the degradations imposed upon them among…

A believer in Babism.