babooness
nounEtymology From baboon + -ess.
1
Uncommon A female baboon.
- The aunt is a skinny old hag, with sharp eyes, a great deal of frizzy grey hair, that looks like a tangled mass of tow on a distaff, a turned-up nose, with large nostrils, and two rows of very perfect grinning teeth, like a monkey’s. Indeed, she principally resembles a middle-aged babooness; she is active, strong, and upright in her figure, about fifty years old.1854 January, “St. Januarius’ to St. Constantius”, in Bentley’s Miscellany, volume XXXV, London: Richard Bentley, […], page 139:
- ‘Fred.’ need n’t send us any monkeys: we are afraid of them. A babooness fell in love with us once, at Barnum’s Museum: in fact, she became so much attached to us, that it was as much as we could do to get away from the affectionate ‘creetur!’1859 March, “Editor’s Table”, in The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, volume LIII, number 3, New York, N.Y.: John A. Gray, […], page 328:
4 more examples
- Rev. G[ilbert]. Haven, in the Christian Advocate, reports a visit to the slave quarters connected with the estate, from which we extract the following:— / “[…] I asked the mother, (dam, perhaps I ought to say, madam somebody will some time say,) ‘Who do you belong to?’ ‘Mrs. Lee.’ ‘Are you a member of the church?’ ‘Yes, the Baptist.’ ‘How many children have you?’ (Pardon me for using the word children; she talked and acted so much like a Christian mother, I didn’t like to say ‘young ones.’) ‘Seven.’ ‘Do you expect to be free?’ ‘Yes, sir; in about a year our time is up.’ ‘Do you want to be free?’ ‘Yes, sir, I do.’ ‘What for?’ ‘Because I do.’ Didn’t that reason show the woman as much as the babooness? Not being acquainted with the latter’s method of reasoning, I cannot be sure, but it struck me as a very familiar and conclusive answer.[…]”1861 August 23, “Gen. Lee’s Negro Quarters”, in Lewiston Daily Evening Journal, volume 1, number 107, Lewiston, Me., page [2], columns 3–4:
- […] these same wild dogs being in the habit of constantly harassing any unlucky baboon or babooness that they found alone, besides having stolen into the village of the baboons at night, when dogs can see better than baboons, and killed and eaten several baboonies who were sleeping with their mothers.1864, “King Lion”, in S[amuel] O[rchart] Beeton, editor, The Boy’s Own Volume of Fact, Fiction, History, and Adventure, London: S. O. Beeton, […], chapter XXIII (I attend the great assembly—The lions think my rifle a portion of myself—I resign the office of royal archiver, &c.—[…]), pages 476–477:
- She is not your wife, she is not even a woman; she was not in her conception divine, she is purely animal; she is the babooness of the land of Nod, she is the female of Cain: slay her!1873, Alexandre Dumas fils, “Advice to a Son; Love, Marriage, etc.”, in George Vandenhoff, transl., Man-Woman; or, The Temple, the Hearth, the Street, Philadelphia, Pa.; New York, N.Y.; Boston, Mass., page 106:
- Alas for the days when my baboon ancestral / In Japanese woods from the lithe limb was pendant, / Instructing, kind hearted, each babooness vestal / How best to achieve for herself a descendant.1882 March 3, “The Devil’s Dictionary”, in The Wasp, volume VIII, number 292, San Francisco, Calif., page 134, column 3: