Babbitt

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -æbɪt

Named for American inventor Isaac Babbitt (1799–1862)

Full definition of babbitt

Noun

1. Babbitt metal.

Verb

1. (transitive) To line with Babbitt metal to reduce friction.

Named after the title character in Sinclair Lewis' 1922 novel, Babbit. Also popularised by the George and Ira Gershwin song "The Babbitt and the Bromide," featured first in the 1927 musical "Funny Face" and later in the film Ziegfeld Follies (1945).

Alternative forms

Noun

1. A person who subscribes complacently to materialistic middle-class ideals
• 1930 The Literary digest, Volume 105, Funk and Wagnalls, p21One speaks of a babbitt habit, a babbitt era. Nothing is more true. America recognized itself in Babbitt, it demurred, but it also admired.
• 2002 Tamkang review, Volume 33, Tamkang College of Arts and Sciences, p158... a "babbitt" is a person full of self-confident bluster who is nevertheless a narrowminded philistine and a hypocrite.
• 2003 William Hyland, George Gershwin: a new biography, Greenwood Publishing Group, p116Ira relished telling the story that Fred Astaire took him aside and said he knew what a babbitt was, but what was a bromide?