Word.ws English Dictionary

tar baby

tar baby noun: 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.

tar baby: a difficult, abstract problem that worsens as one attempts to handle it; a sticky situation,...
Image: A. B. FROST, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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
    • If Dees had indicated any willingness to personally pursue the case, Ed would've immediately had him appointed as a special prosecutor and turned this tar baby of a case over to him on the spot.2001, Bobby Delaughter, Never Too Late: A Prosecutor's Story of Justice in the Medgar Evars Case, page 75
  2. (derogatory, ethnic, slang, slur) A black person.

Forms of tar baby

pluraltar babies

Origin of tar baby

Referring to a doll made of tar and turpentine to entrap Br'er Rabbit in one of Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories, published in 1881, from earlier African American folklore, from earlier African (e.g. Kongo) folklore, influenced in America by similar stories from various unrelated Native American tribes, such as the Cherokee, Alabama, Koasati, and Apache. (Similar stories are found throughout the world, e.g. among the Mixtec and Zapotec.)

Questions about tar baby

What does tar baby mean?
Tar baby means 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.
What part of speech is tar baby?
Tar baby is a noun.
What is the plural of tar baby?
The plural of tar baby is tar babies.

Words near tar baby in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 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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Cite this entry: “tar baby.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tar_baby. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.