Barnaby

English

Etymology

• English surname of Aramaic origin, from בַּר נְבִיָּא (bar nəḇiyyā, literally “prophet’s son”).
• Also as an English surname, from Old English Beornwald, from beorn (“young warrior”) + wealdan (“rule”) + Old Norse býr (“farmstead”).

Noun

Barnaby (uncountable)

1. (archaic) A lively and fast-paced dance; (by extension) any quick and uneven movement.
   • 1640-1687, Charles Cotton, in his burlesque of Virgil:

     Bounce cry the port-holes, out they fly
     And make the world dance Barnaby.

   • 1985, Gregory Sass, Redcoat, page 28:

     It was a regular Barnaby dance; I'd never seen anyone move so quickly. Before the culprit bolted out the door into the night,

   • 1996, Jo Ann Ferguson, Miss Charity's Case, page 182:

     "Owell gave me this. Said to get it to you in a Barnaby dance. 'Ere it is." His tongue scraped across his lower lip as he stared at Charity.

   • 2009, Julia Golding, The Diamond of Drury Lane, page 434:

     We were now doing a strange sort of Barnaby dance: shuffling to and fro as I blocked his attempts to set off in pursuit.

Proper noun

Barnaby

1. A male given name from Hebrew, from the medieval vernacular form of Barnabas.
   • 1595, Edmund Spenser, Epithalamium:

     This day the sun is in his chiefest height
     With Barnaby the Bright.

   • 1848, John O'Donovan, “The Annals of the Four Masters”, in The Dublin University Magazine, volume 31, page 577:

     The name Barnaby may strike the reader as out of place in so Celtic a pedigree; but this was an anglicisation of the true name, Brian Oge - - - Now, times are altered, and his anglicised descendants will probably begin to use Brian as a family name again, rejecting Barnaby as less respectable.

   • 1962, Edward Eager, Seven-Day Magic, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, published 1999, →ISBN, page 8:

     Barnaby liked his own name. He was proud of its differentness and would never answer to "Barney", or any other nickname.

   • 2000, Alexei Sayle, Barcelona Plates:

     But instead of pressing the button that would have taped the play she pressed the button that activated the built-in microphone and recorded a hundred and twenty minutes of hers and Barnaby's home life, which aurally consisted of 'Want a cup of tea?' 'No thanks.'

Derived terms

• long Barnaby

References

• [Francis] Grose [et al.] (1811) “Barnaby”, in Lexicon Balatronicum. A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence. […], London: […] C. Chappell, […], →OCLC.