babushka

noun

Etymology: Borrowed from Russian ба́бушка (bábuška, “grandmother”), from Old East Slavic бабушка (babuška, “grandmother, midwife”). First attested in the 1830s.

1. An Eastern European old woman.

   “Yet, much as I loved to listen to it, standing there in the heat of all the lighted candles and dressed in my heavy shuba and felt boots, I invariably, halfway through the service, would begin to feel an intolerable pain across my shoulders which would spread across my back, gradually getting worse, until in the end I was forced to go to the back of the church and find a corner on a bench especially placed there for all the old babushkas and dedushkas who were also unable to bear the strain of standing throughout the whole service.”

   “There was a 92-year-old babushka who was injured, and we put her on the stretcher and helped get her out.”

2. An Eastern European old woman.

   “I tell thee what, Babushka! I have no time to waste with thee in idle words.”

   “The young coachman […] not knowing how to treat the old woman: whether with deference as it seemed to him proper, because the old woman wore the same kind of attire as his babushka and the mother of his house did […]”

3. A traditional floral headscarf worn by an Eastern European woman, tied under the chin.

   “White Parian bust of smiling Russian peasant woman - with babushka covering head, lovely detail work, 21½″ tall”

   ““Say hello to old Stanley,” he called as she pattered down the steps into the street, flung a babushka over her license plate and screeched away down Telegraph.”

4. A Russian doll, a matryoshka.

   “The present inhabitants of the Kremlin […] have rigged the Constitution in a series of articles which fit into each other like those wooden babushkas Russian peasants used to make, so that, as one shell after another is removed, the effective power finally resides in the tiny babushka in the inmost center.”