Baa
/bɑː/noun
The bleating sound a sheep makes.
Did you know?English baa is an onomatopoeic animal cry, and its long vowel reflects how speakers have imitated the sheep’s bleat rather than inherited a normal dictionary root.
Etymological Timeline
Middle English
English
baa
“An imitated sheep sound, a bleat”
Old English
English
bǣ
“An imitative sheep cry”
Proto-Germanic
PGmc
*bǣ-
“An imitative animal cry, probably a sheep bleat”
Proto-Indo-European
PIE
*bʰeh₂-
“No secure direct reconstruction; the form is only a loose scholarly comparison, not certain”
Modern English
English
baa
“The bleating sound of a sheep”