Babka

["Dr. DebbySue Vandevender" <debbysue@JUNO.COM>]

        I am curious.  There is a bake shop that sells a cake called
"babka."  It is a coffee cake (bread loaf form) with raisins (both black
and golden), walnuts, and swirls of cinnamon.
        Did  grandmothers make this cake in Russia?
        By the way, it is lucious!
Debby Sue
debbysue@juno.com

On Sun, 8 Sep 1996 11:23:49 -0700 "L. Phillips"
<lphillip@CIAO.TRAIL.BC.CA> writes:
>On Sat, 7 Sep 1996, Linda Slacum wrote:
>
>> Does anyone know the origins of babushka?  Russian Grandma?  Old
>woman with
>> a scarf?  A scarf?  I'm at home and none of my resources help.  TIA
>
>According to my Russian-English Dictionary, "babushka" does mean
>"grandmother; grandmamma; grandma; granny"  It is a diminuative
>derived
>from "babka" meaning "old woman/crone/grandmother" which in turn is a
>diminutive of "baba" meaning "(peasant) woman/woman/milksop,
>molly-coddle, old woman/wife, old woman".  In Russian diminutives are
>applied to words relating to children or as endearments to names.
>Petroushka is the diminutive of Piotr  meaning Peter.
>
>You can see that babushka is not a high status word which reflects the
>position of old women or women of a lower class, even in the days of
>the
>pretensions of a classless society in Russia.
>
>Lynne Phillips, Teacher-Librarian, Cook Ave Elementary School
>Rossland, British Columbia, Canada    lphillip@ciao.trail.bc.ca
>