Idiom
baby and bathwater
Meaning
Used in reference to an error in which something valuable is discarded in the process of removing or rejecting something unwanted.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater when you change the system.”
“While we need to fix the budget, we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater by cutting essential services.”
“In their rush to modernize the company, the new managers threw the baby out with the bathwater by discarding the very traditions that made the brand successful.”
Examples
simple
“Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater when you change the system.”
contextual
“While we need to fix the budget, we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater by cutting essential services.”
complex
“In their rush to modernize the company, the new managers threw the baby out with the bathwater by discarding the very traditions that made the brand successful.”
Origin
From the phrase throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Key words
Related idioms
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