Forms: 6–7 bea, ba, (7 Sc. bae), 7– baa, 9 (reduplicated) ba-ba. [f. prec. vb.] The cry of a sheep or lamb; a bleat.
1589. Pappe w. Hatchet (1844), 37. They haue no propertie of sheepe but bea.
c. 1600. Ever-Green (1761), II. 58. With mony a Bae and Bleit.
1870. Daily News, 11 Oct., 5/5. Deprived of our shepherd and our sheep-dogs, we civic sheep have set up so loud a ba-ba that we have terrified the wolves who wished to devour us.
1877. Blackie, Wise Men, 264. The snow-white lamb … fills the solitude with tremulous baa.
b. Comb., as bea-waymenting, -wailing; baa(h-ling, a little lamb; baa-lamb, nursery equivalent of ‘lamb.’
1580. Sidney, Arcadia (1622), lxix. 77. Still for thy Dam with bea-waymenting crie.
a. 1649. Drumm. of Hawth., Poems, Wks. (1711), 4/2. There bea-wailing strays A harmless lamb.
1854. Thackeray, Newcomes, 2. Silly little knock-kneed baah-ling.
