854: baby Apr 10, 2017

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The word 'baby', much like the word, 'mom' and 'dad' come from imitating the way and infant babbles. In fact, even 'babble' comes from the way babies may repeat 'ba'. This same garble that gave English 'baby' and French 'bébé' also gave Hindi 'babu' and kiSwahili 'baba', the latter two both meaning 'father'. In the same way that people will make words in association to the way simple, basic manner babies speak, there are a great number of phrases that come from the many connotations people have to babies. One of many of these idioms, 'baby blues', refers to blue eyes that babies have, but for a long time this also was a sort of euphemism for postpartum depression.

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