Word.ws English Dictionary

tar babies

tar babies is the plural of tar baby.

Meaning of tar baby

Noun

tar baby (plural tar babies)

  1. (US) A difficult, abstract problem that worsens as one attempts to handle it; a sticky situation, especially one where attempts to make it better only make it worse.
    • Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is apologizing for referring to the troubled Big Dig construction project as a "tar baby." / Romney made the comment during a speech at a fund-raiser with Iowa Republicans on Saturday. Romney told the crowd "The best thing politically would be to stay as far away...2006, Mitt Romney, quoted in "Romney apologizes for calling Big Dig 'tar baby'", July 31, 2006, WISTV.com
  2. (derogatory, ethnic, slang, slur) A black person.

Questions about tar babies

What is tar babies the plural of?
Tar babies is the plural of tar baby.

Words near tar babies in the dictionary

  1. taqwacore
  2. tar
  3. tar and feather
  4. tar apple
  5. tar apples
  6. tar babies
  7. tar baby
  8. tar boil
  9. tar boils
  10. tar derby
  11. Tar Heel

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tar babies (page history and authors); tar baby (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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