bah

Clipping of English Bahamian.

bah

1. (international standards) ISO 639-3 language code for Bahamian Creole.

• Wiktionary’s coverage of Bahamian Creole terms

Early 19th century, probably borrowed from French bah.

• baugh (archaic)

• (UK) IPA^(key): /bæ/, /bɑː/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æ, -ɑː
• Homophones: baa, bar (in some pronunciations)

bah

1. (sometimes humorous) Expressing contempt, disgust, or bad temper.
   • 1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 301:

     "To the doctor's? Bah!" said the sorceress, and spat upon the floor.

   • 1913 June–December, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Forging Bonds of Hate and ——?”, in The Return of Tarzan, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert] L[evi] Burt Company, […], published March 1915, →OCLC, page 22:

     “Bah!” cried the woman. “My husband will know!”

   • 1992, April Kihlstrom, Dangerous Masquerade:

     Templeton looked over the assembled servants speculatively, then shrugged. "Bah!" he said. "They're of no use to me. Come, Andrew, a word with you upstairs."

• (expressing contempt): pht, feh, meh, pooh, pshaw, poh, pish; see also Thesaurus:bah
• (expressing disgust): bleh, ick, ych a fi; see also Thesaurus:yuck

• bah humbug
• pooh-bah, poobah

• baa

• (UK) IPA^(key): /bɑː/
• Rhymes: -ɑː
• Homophones: baa, bar (in some pronunciations)

bah (plural bahs)

1. Alternative spelling of baa.
   • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

     `There, cut his throat quick. Where is the saucer?' `The Goat! the Goat! the Goat! Give me the blood of my black goat! I must have it, don't you see I must have it? Oh! oh! oh! give me the blood of the goat.' At this moment a terrified bah! announced that the poor goat had been sacrificed, and the next minute a woman ran up with a saucer full of blood.

bah

1. Alternative spelling of baa.

bah

1. (Manglish, Singlish) Alternative spelling of ba.

• sis boom bah

• ABH, AHB, BHA, HAB, HBA, Hab, Hab., hab

Exclamatory

• IPA^(key): /bɑ/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: bah

bah

1. An exclamation of disapproval, contempt or disgust: bah, yuck

Not well-attested in texts, but of imitative origin nevertheless, similar to bayer (“to gape”). Sense 2 is a denasalized version of "ben".

• IPA^(key): /ba/

• Audio:

  (file)

bah

1. No.

   Bah, bah, bah !

   No, no, no!

2. An exclamation to fill space, often used as an intensifier; well, err, um

   Synonym: ben

   Tu veux jouer aussi ? ― Bah, ouais.

   Do you want to play too? ― Well, yeah.

• “bah”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• hab

• bäh

Exclamatory

• IPA^(key): /ba(h)/, /baː/, /ba.aː/

• Audio:

  (file)

bah

1. an exclamation of disgust: yuck, etc.

   Synonyms: igitt, iiih, pfui, üäh

For pronunciation and definitions of bah – see 肉 (“meat; flesh”). (This term is the pe̍h-ōe-jī form of 肉).

From Proto-Malayic, from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *bahaq, from Proto-Austronesian *baSaq.

• IPA^(key): /bəah/

bah

1. flood (overflow of water)

• (Standard Indonesian) IPA^(key): /ˈbah/ [ˈbah]
• Rhymes: -ah
• Syllabification: bah

Inherited from Malay bah, from Proto-Malayic, from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *bahaq, from Proto-Austronesian *baSaq.

bah (plural bah-bah)

1. (dialectal) synonym of banjir (“flood”)

From Dutch bah.

bah

1. synonym of idih

Perhaps from Malay bah.

bah

1. (dialectal) an exclamation of intimacy

• “bah” in Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia, Jakarta: Agency for Language Development and Cultivation – Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia, 2016.

Exclamatory

• IPA^(key): /ˈba/, which may be followed by [h] or [ʔ] or trigger syntactic gemination.^[1]
• Rhymes: -a
• Hyphenation: bah

bah

1. indicates astonishment, resignation and despise; usually used after noticing or hearing something you don't like or you don't know what to think about, to avoid commenting or giving an answer to a question

• mah

• bah in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

• IPA^(key): /bah/
• Rhymes: -ah

From Proto-Malayic, from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *bahaq, from Proto-Austronesian *baSaq. Cognate with Sundanese caah.

bah (Jawi spelling به, plural bah-bah)

1. flood (overflow of water)

   Synonym: banjir

• Indonesian: bah

bah (Jawi spelling به)

1. short for abah

bah (Jawi spelling به)

1. short for babah

bah (Jawi spelling به)

1. abbreviation of bahasa

bah (Jawi spelling به)

1. alternative form of bawah

bah!

1. (Rio Grande do Sul) alternative form of bá

bah

1. water
2. river

• Zufri Hidayat et al. (2015). Kamus Bahasa Simalungun–Indonesia (2nd ed.). Medan: Balai Bahasa Provinsi Sumatera Utara, p. 18.

Possibly from Latin vāh.

• IPA^(key): /ˈba/ [ˈba]
• Rhymes: -a

bah

1. indicates disdain or unbelief

• qué va

• “bah”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 10 December 2024

bah

1. bet

• http://www.languageinindia.com/feb2013/zouphonologyfinal.pdf

bah

1. to owe

• Samson Alexander Lotven (2021) The Sound Systems of Zophei Dialects and Other Maraic Languages (Dissertation)‎^[1]