Word.ws English Dictionary

tarbaby

tarbaby is the alternative form 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.

Forms of tarbaby

pluraltarbabies

Questions about tarbaby

What is tarbaby the alternative form of?
Tarbaby is the alternative form of tar baby.

Words near tarbaby in the dictionary

  1. Tarazed
  2. tarazepide
  3. Tarazona
  4. Taraškievica
  5. tarbabies
  6. tarbaby
  7. tarbadillo
  8. tarbagan
  9. tarbagans
  10. tarball
  11. tarballed

Source and license

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