bauble

English

From Middle English bable, babel, babull, babulle, from Old French babel, baubel (“trinket, child's toy”), most likely a reduplication of bel, ultimately from Latin bellus (“pretty”).

bauble (plural baubles)

A cheap showy ornament or piece of jewellery; a gewgaw.
- 1818, [Mary Shelley], chapter 8, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. , volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, →OCLC:
  […] as to the bauble on which the chief proof rests, if she had earnestly desired it, I should have willingly given it to her, so much do I esteem and value her.
- 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 6, in The History of Pendennis. , volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, , published 1849–1850, →OCLC:
  Have none before or after him staked all their treasure of life, as a savage does his land and possessions against a draught of the fair-skins’ fire-water, or a couple of bauble eyes?
- 1977, Jimmy Webb (lyrics and music), “Highwayman”:
  Many a young maid lost her baubles to my trade.
(figurative, by extension) Anything trivial and worthless.
- 1841, The New Monthly Magazine and Humorist, page 186:
  His hind quarters were likewise short, and not racinglike, and taken as a specimen of the horse, he was a mere bauble when looked at by the side of an English race-horse, much less a hunter.
A small shiny spherical decoration, commonly put on Christmas trees.
A club or sceptre carried by a jester.

cheap showy ornament piece of jewellery

small shiny spherical decoration, commonly put on Christmas trees

club or sceptre carried by a jester