babbitt

name

1. A surname.
2. A city in Saint Louis County, Minnesota, United States.

noun

Etymology: From Babbitt, the surname of George Babbitt, the title character of the novel Babbitt (1922) by the American author Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951). The word was also popularized by the George (1898–1937) and Ira Gershwin (1896–1983) song “The Babbitt and the Bromide”, first featured in the 1927 musical Funny Face and later in the film Ziegfeld Follies (1945).

1. Alternative letter-case form of Babbitt (“a person who subscribes complacently to materialistic middle-class ideals”).

   “One speaks of a babbitt habit, a babbitt era. Nothing is more true. America recognized itself in Babbitt, it demurred, but it also admired.”

   “… a "babbitt" is a person full of self-confident bluster who is nevertheless a narrowminded philistine and a hypocrite.]”

verb

Etymology: The noun is derived from Babbitt, the surname of the American inventor Isaac Babbitt (1799–1862) who invented the alloy. The verb is derived from the noun.

1. To line (something) with babbitt metal to reduce friction.

   “The main bearings were babbitted and line-bored.”

   “The caps for these journal-boxes or bearings may be Babbited by this same jig, and they would, of course, exactly conform to the other portions of the bearings in the frame. […] This drilling jig is a negative of the interior of the frame. It has two sets of bearings, c d and e f, which are at right angles to each other, and which set in the longitudinal and transverse bearings that have been made and "Babbited" in the cast frame, and thus steady and hold it.”