Bābus, bawbus (gypsy), grandfather. "Mandy dikked yer bābus a chinnin koshters kāliko adré 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. Americanisms.
Baby-paps (thieves), rhyming slang for caps.
Bacca-pipe (popular), old-fashioned way of wearing whiskers. The bacca-pipe was the whisker curled in tiny ringlets.
Bach, to, batch, baching (American), 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 quarter the money which they must otherwise have expended on treating ladies to carriages, juleps and cobblers after bathing, billiards and ten pins, ball tickets and suppers.
Baching, a delightful Western amusement 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 judgment 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 synonymous expressions for an exhortation 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. Sladen: 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
