booby – English noun declension

English noun forms of booby

Noun: booby
Singularbooby
Pluralboobies

Sample Sentences

  • A Frenchman, in his own Country, would dress a fine Dinner of twenty Dishes, and all genteel and pretty, for the Expence he will put an English Lord to for dressing one Dish. But then there is the little petty Profit. [...] So much is the blind Folly of this Age, that they would rather be impos'd on by a French Booby, than give Encouragement to a good English Cook! [1747, Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, page iii:]
  • The daughter is said to be well-bred and beautiful; the son an awkward booby, reared up and spoiled at his mother's apron-string. [1773, Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer, act I:]
  • As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs. [1854, Henry David Thoreau, chapter I, in Walden, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co, published 1910, page 74:]
  • She knotted our ribbons very tightly so that we should not lose them,—they pulled the little hairs under our curls and made us "ooch" and wriggle. Then Dede gave us little smacks and called us boobies. [1942, Emily Carr, “How Lizzie Was Shamed Right Through”, in The Book of Small, Toronto, Ont.: Oxford University Press, →OCLC:]
  • Then at the last minute Harris was brought aboard as Dr. Zachary Smith, initially an authentic, lip-curling nogoodnik who, it was presently discovered, could be better used for laughs played off Mumy and a sober-sided robot (“You bubbleheaded booby,” sneers Harris. “That does not compute,” returns the robot dryly). [1966 September 24, TV Guide, Radnor, Pa., page 25, column 1:]
  • At which time, ſome Boobyes, weary of flight, made our Ship their pearch, an animall ſo ſimple as ſuffers any to take her without feare, as if a ſtupid ſenſe made her careleſſe of danger... [1638, Sir Thomas Herbert, Some years travels into divers parts of Asia and Afrique:]
  • We found on St. Paul's only two kinds of birds—the booby and the noddy. The former is a species of gannet, and the latter a tern. Both are of a tame and stupid disposition, and are so unaccustomed to visitors, that I could have killed any number of them with my geological hammer. [1839, Robert FitzRoy, Phillip Parker King, Charles Darwin, chapter I, in Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships Adventure and Beagle, between the Years 1826 and 1836, […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC:]
  • Boobies are powerful, aerobatic fliers, and they can be challenging to photograph. [2021, Peter Cavanagh, “5. Large Waterbirds”, in 100 Flying Birds: Photographing the Mechanics of Flight, →ISBN, page 114:]
  • A booby may displace another booby or a bridged ball by roquet, ricochet, or concussion. [1863, Mayne Reid, Croquet, London: C.J. Skeet, page 33:]

Etymology

1. 17th century. From Spanish bobo, from Latin balbus (“stammering”).
2. (bird): Compare typologically Translingual Morus, German Tölpel, Polish głuptak (akin to głupek), Russian о́луша (óluša) (akin to о́лух (ólux)). See: Spanish Nouns 'bobo', Latin Nouns 'balbus'.