baboon
ba-BOON · noun
Origin
English baboon comes from Middle English babewin or baboin, from Old French babouin, from baboue meaning 'grimace' or 'muzzle', itself of imitative origin.
This is Curio: one word's origin story, every morning. No feed, no backlog.
One short email each morning. Free; stop anytime. See a sample →
Journey
The word traces back to an imitative base *bab-, echoing the reduplicated syllable 'ba' of early infant babble and the lip movements of speech — a sound rooted in faces and mouths long before it settled on this particular grimacing animal.
Related words
The same imitative root *bab- lies behind English babble, babe, and baby — all words born from the instinctive 'ba' sounds of infants.