Word Study
babbitt
OXFORD DICTIONARY
babbitt, n.
1 (in full Babbitt metal) any of a group of soft alloys of tin, antimony, copper, and usu. lead, used for lining bearings etc., to diminish friction.
2 (babbitt) a bearing-lining made of this.
1 (in full Babbitt metal) any of a group of soft alloys of tin, antimony, copper, and usu. lead, used for lining bearings etc., to diminish friction.
2 (babbitt) a bearing-lining made of this.
babbitt, n. a materialistic, complacent businessman.
Derivative
Babbittry n.
Etymology
George Babbitt, a character in the novel Babbitt (1922) by S. Lewis
THESAURUS
babbitt
Middle American, Philistine, anal character, arriviste, boeotian, boob, boor, bounder, bourgeois, burgher, cad, churl, clown, compulsive character, conformer, conformist, conventionalist, epicier, formalist, groundling, guttersnipe, hooligan, ill-bred fellow, looby, lout, low fellow, methodologist, middle-class type, middlebrow, model child, mucker, nouveau riche, organization man, parrot, parvenu, peasant, pedant, perfectionist, plastic person, precisian, precisianist, ribald, rough, roughneck, rowdy, ruffian, sheep, square, teenybopper, trimmer, upstart, vulgarian, vulgarist, yes-man, yokelFor further exploring for "babbitt" in Webster Dictionary Online