The process of behaving like George Babbitt; conforming uncritically to mainstream commercial and social values without independent thought.
Present participle of 'babbit,' formed from the character Babbitt by Lewis. Originally mechanical (a type of bearing metal), but Lewis's novel transformed it into a sociological term describing human behavior.
The fact that a character from one novel could inspire an entire vocabulary of criticism—babbitt, babbittism, babbittry—shows how powerful satire can be; readers found Lewis's critique so apt they adopted his language to describe real people in their own lives.
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