Ali Baba

From Arabic عَلِيّ بَابَا‎ (ʕaliyy bābā). The use of Ali Baba to designate a type of containers originates from the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (see the use as proper noun below), suggesting the appearance of the oil jars in which the thieves hide in the story. Compare Ali Baba bag.

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Ali Baba

1. The fictional protagonist of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, famous for his encounter with forty thieves and their treasure trove cave that opens on the command "open sesame".

Ali Baba (plural Ali Babas)

1. (slang) An extremely lucky person, especially one who acquires a large fortune by luck or by chance.
2. (slang, ethnic slur, US, military) An Iraqi.
3. (attributive) Designating a large container, such as a jar or a basket, with a flat base and a rounded body that tapers to a narrower neck.
   • 2009, Martha Reinhard Smallwood Field [Catherine Cole, pseud.], The Story of the Old French Market, ca. 1916, no pagination, quoted in Daniel H. Usner, Jr., Indian Work: Language and Livelihood in Native American History, Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 101:

     Towering over all these are the huge Ali Baba baskets, square at the bottom, round at the top, and fitted with square covers that pull down like a Dutch smoker's cap.

   • 2004 May 11, Sgt Len Scott RAPC, “My Billets in Algiers: A Pub, a Casino and a Bank”, in BBC‎, retrieved 16 April 2023:

     We found little piles in the oddest places - the oddest being within an Ali Baba jar some six feet high.

   • 2020, Marchell Abrahams, chapter 7, in Angels at Twenty Past, Troubador Publishing, →ISBN:

     Behind what looked like—but surely couldn't be—an oversized Ali Baba laundry basket dribbling earth and pebbles over the floor, peeped a save.

4. An Ali Baba basket.
   • 2003, Nigel Slater, “Duckling à l’orange”, in Toast, Fourth Estate, published 2010, →ISBN:

     And don’t forget to put your dirty clothes in the Ali Baba.