The expression “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” means not rejecting an entire concept if parts of it are good. Its origin is German, and it may have come from the unsanitary nature of baths in Europe before the 16th century. The expression encourages keeping the good parts of an idea or practice and eliminating the bad. However, opinions on what is good and bad can vary. In some cases, such as in criminal justice systems, evidence obtained illegally is inadmissible.
“Throwing the baby out with the bathwater” is an expression that implies that an entire idea, concept, practice, or project need not be rejected or stopped if any part of it is good. In this sense, the child represents the good part that can be preserved. Bath water, on the other hand, is usually dirty after the baby has been bathed and needs to be discarded, just like the parts of the concept that are bad or useless.
Origins of the phrase
There are many ideas about the possible origins of this expression. Many people mistakenly attribute the expression to English or Irish origin. The phrase was first recorded in 1512 and used by a German writer, Thomas Murner, in his book of verse, Die Narrenbeschworung. From Germany, the expression came into common use in the United Kingdom and then in France.
The idea of throwing the baby out with the bathwater may have been inspired by the relatively few baths people took in Europe before the 16th century. The baths were often thought to be unsanitary, and were difficult to prepare, because the bath water had to be drawn and heated. The difficulty of preparing bath water often meant that the same water could be used for a whole family’s bath and the baby was often washed last. At this point, the bath water may be quite dirty and may obscure the baby’s vision. A mother wouldn’t want to accidentally discard her baby with the cloudy bath water, not that that could ever happen.
The good and the bad
Throwing the baby with the bathwater is unlikely to occur, but his expression has been a metaphor for the dichotomy that exists in an idea or practice that is both good and bad. In these cases, the good can be kept while eliminating the bad. Some people might be inclined to throw everything away and start over, and this expression is often used by people to encourage keeping the good parts.
Express an opinion
Expression can be highly subjective, because individuals might define what constitutes good and evil in very different ways. Someone who disapproves of human cloning, for example, may feel that other types of cloning are also bad and that all cloning attempts should be rejected. Another person who disagrees with human cloning but supports research into other types of cloning might say that rejecting all types of cloning is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
This sentence indicates a logical error. The assumption is that if something is bad and belongs to a group, then everything in that group must be bad. A related expression could be “a rotten apple ruins the bunch”. When applied to this example, the sentence would express the idea that discarding all apples would waste all the good apples that were in the pile.
Legal applications
In some cases, a system needs to practice throwing the baby with the bathwater. In some criminal justice systems, for example, an illegally obtained confession or illegal search can mean that any resulting evidence is inadmissible. This is often referred to as “fruit of the poisoned tree”. Under some laws, any evidence resulting from a violation of the justice system is considered corrupt and cannot be used.
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