[Ads-l] [EXTERNAL] Antedating of ""Bae"

[Joanne Despres]

It's possible that the author of the message was a bad speller, Fred, but
if so, he or she really doubled down on the bad spellings!  I didn't bother
reporting these uses, but here are few more from the same author years
later, plus one that from a grieving person in Racine, WI:

My BAE



Remember almost 1 year ago today.  I’ll always be sailing away with you.
My love, always



SUNSHINE



p. 121

Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, MO)

February 14, 1988

[Newspapers.com]





MY BAE:



I would still choose you,

Of all the men in the world,

To spend the rest of my life with.

15 yrs. And still you treat me

As if it has been our first.



I.T.A.L.Y. Sunshine



p. 51

Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, MO)

February 14, 1991

[Newspapers.com]





To my *Bae*:



Two years ago today you left me to go to a better place.  Although you’re
happy and free of pain, I miss you more and more every day.



p. 2B

The Journal Times (Racine, Wisconsin)

June 11, 2000

[Newspapers.com]



I suppose it's possible that, for the various early users of the word,
these were independently-coined nonce formations, but I suspect that they
were more than that in the case of the repeat-user.  That was clearly a
term of endearment purposefully chosen, and perhaps privately coined.  It's
hard to know!

Joanne

On Thu, Jan 15, 2026 at 3:57 PM Shapiro, Fred <
00001ac016895344-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

> This is an interesting one.  My first reaction was that Joanne's 1983
> citation is so much earlier than other evidence that it must be an
> accidental typo for "babe."  Then I started searching Newspapers.com and
> focusing on Valentine's Day newspaper messages.  I see that there are other
> uses of "my bae" in Valentine's Day messages over the years.  The earliest
> I have seen so far is the following:
>
> 1981 Memphis-Scimitar 14 Feb. 21/1 (Newspapers.com)  TO MY BAE. FROM YOUR
> BAE.
>
> The frequency of such uses is greater than zero, but is really quite low
> when one realizes that Newspapers.com is searching billions of Valentine's
> Day messages.  I'm not sure about an accidental-typo theory when I see that
> the 1981 instance repeats BAE.  Maybe the Sunshine person in Joanne's 1983
> cite, who used "MY BAE" on other Valentines Days in the St. Louis
> Post-Dispatch, was just a really bad speller.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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