Expressions | Throw the Baby out with the Bath Water

Episode Transcript

This is your host, Danny, and this is expressions from English plus podcast. Today’s expression is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. What does that mean? It’s a long expression, right? But what does it mean? Throw the baby? That’s cruel? Yes, but it’s just an expression. So don’t panic. But what does it mean? Now? I want you to imagine that somebody gave you some apples. What if one of the apples was bad? What do you do? Do you throw all of the apples just because one bad apple is with the other apples? No, of course, the best thing to do is to take the bad apple, throw it away and keep the good ones. But what happens if you throw away all the apples just because one of them is bad, or two of them are bad. So here, you will be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. That’s the meaning of throw the baby out with the bathwater. If you throw the baby out with the bathwater, you lose the good parts of something as well as the bad parts because you reject it as a whole instead of just removing what is bad. And of course, we don’t use that when we want to talk about apples. We use that when we want to talk about certain situations, decisions. Sometimes people reject the whole thing. But there are some good things. You can take the good stuff, reject the bad stuff, or deal with the bad stuff in a way, fix them, whatever. But don’t just reject everything just because maybe you hate this person or you hate the situation or you hate this decision. It is not like that. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. And people usually use this expression to say we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. We usually use it in negative because we want to tell people please don’t get rid of the good stuff just because you saw something bad. Get rid of the bad stuff and keep the good stuff. Why should we reject everything just because a couple of things or people within this group are bad. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. That is your expression for today. Another day another expression from English plus podcast Don’t forget to support English plus podcast on Patreon. The link is in the description. This is your host Danny thank you very much for listening to another episode from English plus podcast. I will see you next time.