Baby phone - 1993, booty phone - 2008

[Benjamin Barrett]

I don't see this on the Oxford Dictionary, AHD or Wiktionary website.

A baby phone is a phone you get when seeking a baby for adoption. That way you can put the phone number in ads and on the Internet and then throw the phone away when you find a child (or give up) without losing your phone number or putting your real phone number out there. (Alternatively, you can get phone numbers that forward to your cell or other telephone.)

The earliest I see for this word is 1993, two citations:

1. "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Our Private Adoption" by Dorothy Kalins, New York Magazine, Jul 26, 1993 (http://bit.ly/1vZmqjG)

This has a bonus in mentions of "cellular phone" and "phone booth." It may be by this time, "phone" was the default combination form of "telephone."

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We have the "baby phone" installed. The only place to bring another line into our apartment is the front coat closet behind glass French doors. Never in the entire adoption process can we come or go without checking the blinking light on the answering machine--a beacon of our progress. Or lack of it.

Just as we're planning to talk again, the baby phone goes dead.

Get a cellular phone and forward your baby phone to it so you don't have to sit home and wait.

But after that the baby phone sleeps in the living-room closet. We spend over $300 that month on phone calls from women with sad stories.
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2. "The independent adoption manual: from beginning to baby" by Laura Beauvais-Godwin, Raymond Godwin (http://bit.ly/1tRGOnc):

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Part II. Setting Up A Telephone Line ("Baby Phone")

It was far better for me to be available to answer the baby phone myself, rather than hook it....

While I kept Hayley on the "baby phone," Paul called Ray Godwin on the other line.
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The earliest I see for "booty phone" meaning "a phone specifically for booty calls" is Urban Dictionary, 2008: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Booty%20Phone

Benjamin Barrett
Formerly of Seattle, WA

Learn Ainu! https://sites.google.com/site/aynuitak1/home
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