rockabye

English

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”)).

Verb

rockabye (third-person singular simple present rockabyes, present participle rockabyeing or rockabying, simple past and past participle rockabyed)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To rock soothingly.
   • 1952, Isabella Holt, Rampole Place, Bobbs-Merrill Company, page 258:

     “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.

   • 1969, Harold F. Blaisdell, The Philosophical Fisherman, Houghton Mifflin Company, page 228:

     It was a pleasant day, the boat rockabyed in the slight chop and by late afternoon I was more nearly asleep than awake.

   • 1969 December 19, Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 91^st Congress, First Session, volume 115, part 30, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, page 40353:

     From the lowliest panhandler on the street to the worthiest recipient of today’s social security benefits we are being “spoiled rotten” and rockabyed to sleep to the strains of that haunting lullaby known as the Beggar-American Rhapsody “Gimme gimme, gimme gimme gimme.”

   • 1975, Modern Poetry Studies, page 136:

     And lying down that night why should I hear the Brownsville trains that long had rockabyed me?

   • 1982, Rowland Molony, “The Snake and the Lizard”, in Four Voices: Poetry from Zimbabwe, Books of Zimbabwe, →ISBN, page 8:

     Sprung rubber alarm clock: it bounced apart
     All over him: boingg: it loves him to death. The rubber loops contort, their moil and clench
     Rockabyeing him out of this world.

   • 1985, David D. Michaels, Visual Optics and Refraction: A Clinical Approach, →ISBN, page 576:

     A contact lens may become scratched, chipped, discolored, contaminated, coated, warped, or desiccated. Poorly fit, it feels like grit or rockabyes out of the eyes.

   • 1992, Sonia Taitz, Mothering Heights: Reclaiming Motherhood from the Experts, William Morrow and Company, →ISBN, page 38:

     She, I noticed, was smiling, but that baby in the treetop might well have smiled as the wind rockabyed her down.

   • 1995, Jewish Currents, page 18:

     Go to sleep, my darling boy, while mother rockabyes you with her tender hand.

   • 1995, Benjamin Taylor, Tales Out of School, Turtle Point Press, page 152:

     He briefly rockabyed the tallow-colored visage in his arms, then with sudden unconcern handed it to Murph.

   • 1998, Graham Dunstan Martin, transl., Jules Laforgue: Selected Poems, Penguin Books, page 71:

     Introibo, Here comes the Husband! View Halloo! Think of the North Pole, breathe in; I’ll buy you jewels, keep for me your keynote of martyrdom! Hey, rockabyed baby, is that everything? You’ve nothing more to say?

   • 1999, Beckian Fritz Goldberg, Never Be the Horse, University of Akron Press, →ISBN, page 53:

     Simple as a child at night who dreams it’s light, he was light. Fallen. Rockabyed.

   • 2000, Irving Feldman, Beautiful False Things, Grove Press, →ISBN, page 90:

     Down behind the piano Larry’s dragging out a shiny cylinder—of oxygen! Tenderly, he rockabyes it: “My baby Seymour—as in ‘emphyseymour.’ Next time I’ll bring his sister Ivy—I promise! She’s all tied up now in the ‘I-See-YOU.’”

   • 2003, Puerto Del Sol, page 137:

     He closes his eyes and rockabyes his head.

   • 2004, John Gordon, Joyce and Reality: The Empirical Strikes Back, Syracuse University Press, →ISBN, page 280:

     As always, there are other things going on, notably a child being sung and rocked—rockabyed—to sleep.

   • 2008, M. P. Shiel, The Black Box, Ramble House, →ISBN, pages 43–44:

     “Oh, well”—throwing up her fingers with drollery in her little flippant way—“we all go soppy for one third of our lives when baby’s ‘up a tree’ rockabyeing … But I can be pretty queerish in sleep; have visions, intuitions. […]”

   • 2009, James Boice, NoVA, Scribner, page 309:

     He takes out a dollar bill and lets go of it. It rockabyes to the sidewalk behind him, somersaults into the lawn, gets trapped by the blades of grass, and flaps there like a wounded bird.

   • 2012, Joshua Cohen, Four New Messages, Graywolf Press:

     He’d been rockabyeing in a rockingchair, then on the bed, thickly rumpled.

   • 2014, Robert Thomas, Bridge, BOA Editions, Ltd., →ISBN:

     The mild sunlight everyone takes for granted—the girl scraping out a sandcastle’s moat, the old man in the park sleeping as the sun rockabyes him—would incinerate you.

   • 2015, Eleonora Nowak-Serwanski, Pacha: The Dog Who Changed My Life, Xlibris, →ISBN:

     A vrrr, vrrr, cruck, cruck, cruck lullaby finally rockabyed me back to sleep.

Noun

rockabye (plural rockabyes)

1. A soothing rocking motion.
   • 1916, The Pedagogical Seminary, page 98:

     All the lullabies of the world suggest undulatory movements or rockabyes in the tree tops.

   • 1937, Pictorial Review:

     This is what Eve was thinking as she listened to the dance music swinging like a rockabye hammock hung between the silky strands of […]

   • 1943, Kappo Phelan, The Commonweal, page 305:

     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.

   • 1946, The Penguin New Writing, page 177:

     Carruthers’ sobs have a rockabye beat.

   • 1947 April, House Beautiful, volume 89, number 4, page 77:

     ROCKABYE HAMMOCK. Grown-ups aren’t the only ones who love the sunny laziness of a hammock, so this one has been designed for children between the ages of four and ten.

   • 1965, Carl Sandburg, quotee, Discourse: A Review of the Liberal Arts, page 145:

     I have been a rockabye baby sloshed in the sludge of the sea and I have clung with a shell over me waiting a tide to bring me breakfast.

   • 1965 January 30, The New Yorker, page 102:

     Then, in a rockabye vein, comes Catalina’s white two-piece suit of knit that resembles a baby’s blanket and is trimmed with pink crocheted scalloped edges and tassels wherever there is an edge to decorate.

   • 1983, Midstream, page 55:

     Just lie still; just don’t cry; I’ll rock you with a rockabye.

   • 1984, Esquire, page 330:

     Debbi will sit and talk for a while, then charge off to breast-feed the baby. Her office features a rockabye-baby device with a fringed top.

   • 1998, Clarence Major, All-Night Visitors, Northeastern University Press, →ISBN, page 211:

     Linda is working her soft soft wet mouth gently against mine, letting me dream her tongue and meanwhile, below, she cups Mr. Genital in her hands and gives the triangle a firm squeeze, a rockabye side-to-side shake.

   • 2004, Cris Mazza, Homeland, Red Hen Press, →ISBN, page 40:

     So the tree house itself could’ve been a celebration of Chad’s birth—the epitome of a rockabye-baby cradle in the tree top?

   • 2008, Lauren Beukes, Moxyland, Jacana, →ISBN, page 76:

     Seed has paired us on the MetroBabe Stroller audio job, designing an interface that works for both toddlers and parents. At the touch of a button, it has to be able to play back rockabyes, current hits packaged as instrumental lullabies for baby, or MetroBabe’s private info station, simply jam-packed with useful information to help guide new parents through the very special hell they’ve signed up for.

   • 2009, Thomas A. Nordstrom, Written on Occasion of..., Xlibris, page 101:

     Trains and books and dolly with open eyes
     Creak and creak for Grandpa’s rockabyes

   • 2010, Elvera M. Denning, The Lord Knows the Way Through the Wilderness: ... All We Have to Do Is Follow, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 290:

     […]; a Mommy’s arms to enfold with love for a rockabye time or a story;

   • 2015, Eric G. Wilson, Keep It Fake: Inventing an Authentic Life, Sarah Crichton Books, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 160:

     The ear, our body’s innate artist, wields the hammer, tip[-]taps the anvil, turns, without trying, the monotonous slammings of water and sand into sweet rockabyes.

   • 2018, Candace Pearson, “In the Barn”, in Joanne Randolph, editor, Poems about Nature, Rosen Publishing, →ISBN, page 10:

     In the eaves, dove coos a rockabye song.

   • 2021, Gaylon Finklea Hecker, Marianne Odom, Growing Up in the Lone Star State: Notable Texans Remember Their Childhoods, University of Texas Press, →ISBN:

     Being a rockabye-baby mom was never my thing.