Babus — Back block.
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Babus, bawbus (gypsy), grand- father. " Mandy dikked yer babus a chinnin koshters kaliko adre lestia tan" — "I saw your grandfather a cutting woods (making skewers) yesterday, in his tent."
Baby-herder (American cowboy slang), a nurse for an infant. — C. Leland Harrison : MS. Ameri-
Baby-paps (thieves), rhyming slang for caps.
Bacca-pipe (popular), old-fash- ioned way of wearing whiskers. The bacca-pipe was the whisker curled in tiny ringlets.
Bach, to, batch, baching (Ame- rican), from the word bachelor. To form a party and live without women's society or aid in the woods or by the sea-side. The expenses entailed on young men who mix with ladies in society at the watering-places in America are great, and often out of all proportion to their means, the natural result being that bachelors take to the forests or sea-surf, and live in tents, enjoying themselves thoroughly without the aid of " the muslin," for half, or quar- ter the money which they must otherwise have expended on treating ladies to carriages, juleps and cobblers after bath- ing, billiards and ten pins, ball tickets and suppers.
Backing, a delightful Western amuse- ment which pleases the doctors. Never
bach? Well, it's a great scheme. Can have just what your appetite craves, and at a nominal price, and there is no woman around to find fault and comment upon the lay-out. Of course it requires judg- ment to prorate the ingredients essential to a first-class repast, and frequently one errs in the quantity of seasoning necessary to impart a palatable relish to corn, tomatoes, string beans, and succotash, but you soon catch on, and frequently before the salt and pepper give out. . . . Yes, baching is perfectly delightful, and while errors may intervene during the period in which the dog is convalescing, the outcome cannot be other than satisfactory — to resident physicians. — California Newspaper.
Back (general) to get one's back up, to get angry, the idea being taken from a cat, that always arches its back when irritated. " Don't get your back up," "Keep your hair on," "Don't lose your shirt," are synony- mous expressions for an exhor- tation to keep one's temper.
Back block (Australian), the country outside the margin of the settled districts.
Like the brief flight of a sparrow upon a
wintry night, Out of the frost and and darkness into
the warm and light, Is the advent of a stranger in the back
blocks out West, Here to-night, and gone to-morrow, after food, roof, and rest. —D. B. W. S laden ! Out West in Queensland (First Edition of Australian Lyrics).
These back blocks are, as a rule, grazing country, often very poor, let to the squatters (or graziers) in immense tracts at a nominal rent. One often hears of a man holding a thousand
