subs. (old).—A bleat; also as verb: of a sheep. Hence BAALING (diminutive) = a lambkin: also (nursery) BAA-LAMB; BAAING = noisy silliness, and as adj.
1500. DUNBAR, Works [PATERSON (1860), 323]. BAE [stands for the cry of sheep].
1580. SIDNEY, Arcadia (1622), lxix. 77. Still for thy Dam with BEA-WAYMENTING crie.
d. 1586. SIDNEY, Arcadia [JAMIESON].
| Like a lamb, whose dam away is fet,… | |
| He treble BAAS for help. |
1589. Pappe with an Hatchet (1844), 37. They haue no propertie of sheepe but BEA.
1594. SHAKESPEARE, Love’s Labour’s Lost, v. 1. Moth. What is a, b, spelt backward, with the horn on his head? Hol. BA, puerita, with a horn added. Moth. BA, most silly sheep with a horn. Ibid. (1607), Coriolanus, ii. 1. 12. He’s a Lambe indeed, that BAES like a Beare.
1600. Evergreen (1761), II. 58. With mony a BAE and Bleit.
c. 1649. DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN, Poems (1711), 4. 2. There BEA-wailing strays A harmless lamb.
1765. C. SMART, Phædrus [BOHN], III. xiv. 56.
| You little fool, why, how you BAA! | |
| This goat is not your own mamma. |
1818. KEATS, Endymion, III. 3.
| There are … who unpen | |
| Their BAAING vanities to browse away | |
| The comfortable green and juicy hay | |
| From Human pastures. |
1832. MARRYAT, Newton Forster, xxxi. The BA-AING and bleating.
1854. THACKERAY, The Newcomes, 2. Silly little knock-kneed BAAH-LING.
1862. MAX MÜLLER [Macmillan’s Magazine, Nov., 57]. Can we admit … that those who imitate the BAAING of the sheep name the animal?
1870. Daily News, 11 Oct. We civic sheep have set up so loud a BA-BA that we have terrified the wolves.
1877. A. B. EDWARDS, A Thousand Miles up the Nile, vi. 138. Our sacrificial sheep … comes BAAING in the rear.
1877. BLACKIE, The Wise Men of Greece, ‘Aristippus,’ 264.
| The snow-white lamb … | |
| That fills the solitude with tremulous BAA. |
