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baboon.

An Old World monkey of the genus Papio, having dog-like muzzles and large canine teeth, cheek pouches, a short tail, and naked callosities on the buttocks.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/bəˈbuːn/Received-Pronunciation/ˌbæˈbuːn/US
  1. An Old World monkey of the genus Papio, having dog-like muzzles and large canine teeth, cheek pouches, a short tail, and naked callosities on the buttocks.

  2. A foolish, stupid or incompetent person.

    colloquial · derogatory
  3. A foolish, stupid or incompetent person. A black person.

    colloquial · derogatory · ethnic · offensive · slur
Where this word comes from

Inherited from Middle English babewin, baboin, from Old French babouin, from baboue (“grimace; muzzle”) (whence French babouin), from an imitative origin. According to Oxford English Dictionary, it was an imitative base *bab-, which is in turn from the (reduplicated) syllable ba, characteristic of early infantile vocalization (and expressive of the movement of the lips in speech). French babouin was also borrowed into other European languages. Confer Vulgar Latin babouinus ("a grimace"), Vulgar Latin babuinare ("to paint marginal figures in manuscripts"), Italian babbuino, babuino (“baboon”), Dutch baviaan (“baboon”), German Pavian (“baboon”) For the sense of infant imitation, see English babble (“to blather”), English babe (“darling”), English baby (“infant”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.