B.A.

• BA

B.A. (plural B.A.'s or B.A.s)

1. Initialism of Bachelor of Arts (collegiate degree).
   • 1918, Yale Alumni Weekly, page 1086:

     In the 1918 list five B.A.’s were given post obitum, honoris causa and 35 were granted to men unable to be present because of absence in the Service.

2. Initialism of Bachelor of Arts (person with the degree).
   • 1909 September, L[ucy] M[aud] Montgomery, “A Wedding at the Stone House”, in Anne of Avonlea, Boston, Mass.: L[ouis] C[oues] Page & Company, →OCLC, page 359:

     That's what college ought to be for, instead of for turning out a lot of B.A.s, so chock full of book-learning and vanity that there ain't room for anything else.

   • 1910, Christopher Wordsworth, Scholae Academicae: Some Account of the Studies at the English Universities in the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge: At the University Press, pages 61–62:

     On account of the shortness of the Lent Term, permission was granted in 1684 (Dec. 16), to make the work lighter by the passing of two graces, allowing inceptors in arts to make their disputations with an M.A. any day in term-time in the Logic, Philosophy, or Law schools, from 7 to 9, or 9 to 11 a. m., and 1 to 3, or 3 to 5 p. m., in the presence of the Proctor (or a regent his deputy) and at least six B.A.’s, and to hold disputations or declamations of inceptors and questionists, even out of term, at the Proctors’ pleasure, provided that the questions were duly posted on the doors and a Moderator present, as well as twelve Sophs at the Sophs’ disputations, and six B.A.’s at the Bachelors’ declamations.

   • 1913, H Fielding-Hall, The Passing of Empire, page 299:

     I should be sorry for the B.A.’s, because I think they have as good stuff in them as the others, but their want of education has unfitted them for work requiring “auza.”

   • 1925, The Calendar, page 802:

     B.A.’s should undergo 2 years’ course at college

• -ab, A&B, A.B., A/B, AB, Ab, a.b., ab, ab-, ab.