baby

   This vocative is occasionally addressed to a real baby, an infant too young to speak. ‘We know papa better, don’t we, baby?’ says the wife of the narrator, in The Newcomes, by William Thackeray. He adds: ‘Here my wife kisses the infant Pendennis with great effusion.’ A young girl similarly addresses a baby in Jennifer, by Janet Whitney. To an older child, or an adult, the use of ‘baby’ can imply childish behaviour. Children, especially, are likely to be very upset if called ‘baby’, ‘crybaby’, or similar terms. In The Trumpet Major, by Thomas Hardy, ‘you jealous baby’ is said scornfully by one woman to another. ‘Baby’ is also used in a friendly or intimate way to adults, usually to someone of the opposite sex to the speaker. ‘Listen, baby’, says a man to a woman acquaintance in World So Wide, by Sinclair Lewis, ‘I hate this formality among us Yanks, even when we’re in Europe. I wish you’d call me Lorenzo, or maybe Larry. I’m certainly going to call you Livy.’ A possible reaction to such usage is seen in Thanksgiving, by Robert Jordan: ‘Be reasonable, baby,’ ‘Don’t call me baby. I’m not your baby’; this is a woman reacting to the term. In Malcolm Bradbury’s Eating People Is Wrong a woman says to a man

   ‘Fasten me up at the back, my baby’, causing him to think: ‘My baby’, there it was again, as always. Treece was the sort of man that people always wanted to mother, or father: indeed, as someone had once said of him in the old bohemian days in London: ‘Some men go around leaving illegitimate children; Stuart leaves illegitimate parents,’ Other intimate uses of ‘my baby’ or ‘poor baby’ occur in An Error of Judgement, by Pamela Hansford Johnson and The Sophomore, by Barry Spacks. These once again occur between the sexes, whereas ‘Baby, you got to’ is addressed to a man by a man in An American Dream, by Norman Mailer. The present author has also been addressed as ‘baby’ by a man, an English journalist who used the term to address almost everyone. Such usage is friendly rather than intimate, on a par with the working man’s use of ‘baby’ to a passing woman. This could be heard in Britain, but would tend to be an imitation of American usage. There is a special use of ‘Baby’ in Tender is the Night, by F.Scott Fitzgerald. Nicole’s sister is named Beth, ‘but she’s always been called Baby’. War Brides, by Lois Battle, has the interesting ‘baby’ + first name, addressed to a tiny baby: ‘He’s been a cranky little dickens, haven’t oo, baby Joe?’