Over the last couple of years, the term bae has achieved widespread usage. While the noun form has been around for over 10 years, adjectival and verbal uses, along with other related forms, have more recently started popping up to describe the people and things we love, or at least like-like. Twitter, in particular, is rife with interesting new uses of the term. The popular social media platform has been used to mine language change for years and has inspired some recent linguistic scholarly research.
What does bae mean?
Dictionary.com defines the noun bae as: “Slang. an affectionate term used to address or refer to one’s girlfriend, boyfriend, etc.” Many have debated the etymology of bae, some insisting that it derives from the acronym “Before Anyone Else.” The earliest evidence of this connection on Twitter is from a July 19, 2011, tweet, making “Before Anyone Else” a backronym of bae, which first surfaced in rap music and on Urban Dictionary in the early-to-mid-2000s. A much more likely etymological explanation is that bae is a shortening of baby or babe.
When bae appears as a noun, its meaning is relatively set: it’s a term of endearment. However possibilities abound as bae moves into to other parts of speech. These days bae has gotten a lot of mileage out of its robust use as an adjective. My guess is that adjectival bae (or what I’ll call adjectival bae for now) at first pointed to the original boyfriend/girlfriend/significant other sense, as in the following examples:
Oh, he wants Meg Ryan to be Bae so he don’t want to tell her he’s Rich Bookstore Man? This is white game. #AshleyGotMail — Ashley Ford (@iSmashFizzle) December 12, 2014
he was supposed to be bae a long time ago but I got friendzoned so now we’re bffs but you know, that’s better than nothing so. — sosa (@sosatooturnt_) December 22, 2014
But adjectival bae goes beyond literal significant others, and into the realm of fantasy significant others. If you were to call a celebrity bae, there’s an implicit understanding that this is make-believe; you don’t actually know this person (David Beckham) and you probably wouldn’t date him if you did (unless you are a former Spice Girl). Additionally bae can be used to describe people who are cool or hot or stylish or wonderful, whether or not you have any romantic interest in them.
Tay is Bae!! NYC style! http://t.co/K8ww7GQnS6 pic.twitter.com/IDWBhVZtFJ — TT4Taylor (@TT4Taylor) December 11, 2014
who wants to be bae and bring me fried, delicious carbs at work? — Pashmina (@IAmBumblebee) December 22, 2014
Things can also be bae. In fact, this is so common, it has sparked internet outrage.
turtle necks is bae pic.twitter.com/7NAUXan8F8 — SUGAR~PET (@sugarpet_) December 11, 2014
pizza is bae
— j. krule (@jskxxs) July 18, 2013
for an example: eliminate “bae” from the grid. everything seems to be “bae” now like your phone charger or your laundry scented candle. — ☆ Dａw ɳ ყ ყ β rａVØ ★ (@Dawnyy_M) December 22, 2014
Sometimes the actual part of speech of emerging slang can be hard to identify. Just look at the debates among linguists surrounding the part of speech of because x. While in the above examples, bae resembles an adjective, is bae really an adjective? Let’s take a closer look at “pizza is bae.” The following constructions commonly appear:
- Pizza is bae.
- Pizza is so bae.
- Pizza is my bae.
- Pizza is the bae.
All of these examples express the same sentiment: “I love pizza.” The second example is clearly an adjective, but part of speech is more murky for the first example. Could there be an omitted-yet-understood possessive pronoun or definite article implied here, as fully spelled out in examples three and four? Is “Pizza is bae,” a shortening of either “Pizza is my bae” or “Pizza is the bae”? Could bae be part of an implied noun phrase? Returning to Ashley Ford’s tweet “Oh, he wants Meg Ryan to be Bae so he don’t want to tell her he’s Rich Bookstore Man?” we see that Ford capitalizes bae, giving it proper noun treatment. Is this because bae is part of the implied noun phrase “his bae?” Or does bae stand on its own as an adjective here? We’d have to ask the individual tweeters to know for sure, and then, they might not even have an answer. With just the written source material, part of speech remains ambiguous.
Beyond bae
Bae has shown itself to be a very productive new element of English. Not only does it straddle parts of speech, but related forms of bae have emerged as well. You can be baeless or baeful, and you can achieve baeness and baedom. You can be super-, uber-, or extra-bae.
You see what happens on twitter on Baedom grips you
— Senzo Sithebe (@SkinnySenz_77) April 29, 2014
chiwetel is so bae. super-bae. uber-bae. extra-bae. baeity. baelicious. baeish.
— January Cheer (@KaburaNganga) November 5, 2014
Bae can also be used as a phrasal verb, as in “bae it out”:
when in doubt, bae it out. pic.twitter.com/nsB7aoVmHO — ☠♡pineapple♡☠ (@broookeee21) January 6, 2014
You can even use baenoculars.
where u is bae pic.twitter.com/6fou3Voj5W — Aaron Carpenter (@AaronCarpenter) June 17, 2014
Bae is used as a verb meaning “to make someone your significant other,” as in “to bae or nah to bae.” While William Shakespeare gets credit for popularizing countless terms in English, it’s safe to say he did not coin the verb use of bae.
to bae or nah to bae -william shakespeare — macky (@mac_oribello) April 26, 2014
Bae is sometimes also used as a superlative, as seen above in the pizza examples. People or things can be “the baest” or “the bae.”
Jennifer Anniston is probably the baest bae of all the baes ever to bae in the history of baedom. — ▲ Alexɑ ▲ (@ironikkah) December 21, 2014
While some English speakers wish to banish the word bae, the Twitterverse and beyond has found bae to be an extremely adaptable and productive term, far more flexible than baby or babe. Now that bae has achieved high levels of pop-culture saturation, perhaps it will lose its edge (maybe it’s already lost its edge). Or maybe it will further establish itself as a go-to term of endearment and become a fixture of English.
