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rockabye

verb

Etymology

From the nursery rhyme Rock-a-bye Baby, previously recorded as "Hush-a-by(e) baby"; blend of rock + lullaby or rock + -abye (as in hush-a-bye, from -a- (connective interfix) + bye (“goodbye, bye-bye”)).

  1. inherited from lullen
  2. compounded as rockabye — “rock + lullaby”

Definitions

  1. To rock soothingly.

    • “We have a Chopin player in the house,” he said. And with a tiny smile he rockabyed the opening phrase of the Ballade and turned his head to look straight at Katie.
    • It was a pleasant day, the boat rockabyed in the slight chop and by late afternoon I was more nearly asleep than awake.

  2. A soothing rocking motion.

    • All the lullabies of the world suggest undulatory movements or rockabyes in the tree tops.
    • This is what Eve was thinking as she listened to the dance music swinging like a rockabye hammock hung between the silky strands of[…]
    • Every forty-five minutes occurred A Laugh, selected sea-chanties were alternately mumbled and roared, and the saddest intermission orchestra I have ever heard fiddled jigs and reels to a rockabye tempo.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for rockabye. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA