From Middle English, from Latin, from Ancient Greek, from Aramaic אבא/ܐܒܐ (ʼaḇā, “father”); see abbot, Abraham for more.
Meanings
(Judaism) Father; religious superior; in the Syriac, Coptic, and Ethiopic churches, a title given to the bishops, and by the bishops to the patriarch; a title given to Jewish scholars in the Talmudic period.
The abba of the coenobion went to him and told him about the brother who had slipped up. 2012, The Book of the Elders: Sayings of the Desert Fathers, →ISBN, page 135:
The rich turbans and flowing robes of the respectable merchants are finely contrasted with the rude sheepskin covering of the mountaineer, and the dark abba of the wandering Arab. 1836, Thomas Hartwell Horne, Landscape Illustrations of the Bible:
Conceiving that he had some solid reason for his refusal, which he could not with propriety disclose in presence of Omar Effendi, I did not urge him to accompany me; but laying aside my white burnous, which I had hitherto worn after the fashion of Cairo, put on a black abba of the Capo Verde which was brought me by as black a Hercules, of whom the interpreter remarked that there was only one person in Jerusalem, and that too a fellow-servant, who was piu diavolo che lui, more devil than he. 2014, Robert Richardson, Travels along the Mediterranean and Parts Adjacent, →ISBN, page 284:
Around their waist, instead of a shawl, they wear a girdle fastened with monstrous silver clasps which may be ornamented, according to the owner's taste, with jewels and in which they stick not only their Koordish dagger, but a pair of great brass or silver-knobbed pistols; from this, too, hang sundry powder-horns and shot-cases, cartridge-boxes, &c. ; and over all they cast a sort of cloak, or abba, of camel's hair, white or black, or striped white brown and black, clasped on the breast, and floating picturesquely behind. 1840, Nicholas Patrick Wiseman, The Dublin Review - Parts 1-2, page 420: