baby and bathwater
baby and bathwater noun: used in reference to an error in which something valuable is discarded in the process of removing or rejecting something unwanted.
Noun
baby and bathwater pl (plural only)
- Used in reference to an error in which something valuable is discarded in the process of removing or rejecting something unwanted.
- From this perspective, the limits of the radical feminist worldview seemed increasingly frustrating to the feminist radicals. In some cases, this led to a baby and bathwater sort of reaction, where even the important lessons of consciousness raising were dismissed as middle-class diversions.2012, Michael Staudenmaier, Truth and Revolution: A History of the Sojourner Truth Organization, 1969–1986, Edinburgh: AK Press, →ISBN, page 23
Origin of baby and bathwater
From the phrase throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Questions about baby and bathwater
- What does baby and bathwater mean?
- Baby and bathwater means used in reference to an error in which something valuable is discarded in the process of removing or rejecting something unwanted.
- What part of speech is baby and bathwater?
- Baby and bathwater is a noun.
Words near baby and bathwater in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: baby and bathwater (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-baby and bathwater.wav.
Cite this entry: “baby and bathwater.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/baby_and_bathwater. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.