Tag: 1500 – 1599

ETYMOLOGY
from back (n.) or (adv.) + friend;
possibly originally a friend who ‘kept back,’ and did not come forward to assist, and so was no real friend

EXAMPLE (for n. 1.)
“… And as for my lorde chamberleyn, he is nott yit comen to town. When he comythe, than schall I woote whatt to doo. Syr John off Parre is yowre freende and myn, and I gaffe hym a fayre armyng sworde wyth-in thys iij dayes. I harde somwhatt by hym off a bakk freende off yowrys; ye schall knowe moore here-afftre. …”

From: Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century
By Paston family, 1472
Published for the Early English Text Society – Edited by Norman Davis, Richard Beadle, and Colin Richmond. 2004

ETYMOLOGY
from bauble (n.) + -ing

EXAMPLE (for adj. 1.)
“…euen so by the smalest booke that can be written, by ye most babling ballet that can be made, and by the least word that can be spoken, his strange and wonderful workes in man, with his most liberall and incomparable guiftes vnto thē do as perfectly set forth and shew themselues as by the greatest volume yt euer was written, by the wayghtyest or wysest concept that euer was made, or by the most eloquente or learned oration that euer was vttered. …”

From: A Short Inuentory of Certayne Idle Inuentions
By C. Thimelthorpe, 1581

ETYMOLOGY
apparently shortened from baty bummill (a lazy or feckless person; an idler), perhaps by association with bum (the buttocks)

EXAMPLE
“… For cozy skoug and rest;
Sae did that Abbey people a’
Effrey’t flee to the Frater-ha’,
Canon, and monk, and dean, and prior,
And batie-bum, and beggin’ freir,
A congregation wode wi’ fear,
Though fat, in dulesome dreiry cheir: …”

From: Papistry Storm’d
Or, The Dingin’ Down O’ The Cathedral
By William Tennant, 1827