babushka
/bəˈbuːʃ.kə/
"babushka" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“babushka” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 8
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - An Eastern European old woman.
Corpus desk
Index EN-babushka · babushka · English
babushka · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "B" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | babushka |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bəˈbuːʃ.kə/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “babushka” in English
Rare enough to double-check
babushka is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /bəˈbuːʃ.kə/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 4 senses are on record.
babushka has no tracked misspelling variants, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from Russian ба́бушка (bábuška, “grandmother”), from Old East Slavic бабушка (babuška, “grandmother, midwife”). First attested in the 1830s. The correct English form is babushka, spelled B-A-B-U-S-H-K-A.
Definition
- 1An Eastern European old woman.
- 2An Eastern European old woman.
- 3A traditional floral headscarf worn by an Eastern European woman, tied under the chin.
- 4A Russian doll, a matryoshka.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how babushka appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
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 c…
There was a 92-year-old babushka who was injured, and we put her on the stretcher and helped get her out.
Etymology
Borrowed from Russian ба́бушка (bábuška, “grandmother”), from Old East Slavic бабушка (babuška, “grandmother, midwife”). First attested in the 1830s.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.