Throw Out the Baby with the Bathwater

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there, this is Carlton Crutchfield, and I’m calling from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Hello, Carlton, welcome.

Hi, Carlton, welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

Well, I teach at St. Cloud State University in central Minnesota, and I teach undergraduates in the Herberger Business School. I’m a lecturer in business law, and I recently, in a lecture, used an idiom, a phrase, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

And when I used that phrase with the average age 20 in my lecture, the average age of my students around 20 years old, literally hands went up in the air, faces became twisted, and they were just astonished and I think repelled by the phrase.

And I discerned their discomfort, and I said, have you ever heard that before? And no one raised their hand. I have 36 students, and not one raised their hand. And then I felt very old. I thought there’s a generational gap.

And then it got me thinking, what is the history and usage of that phrase? And whether or not there’s a gap between generations in the use of that phrase.

And Carlton, are these all native English speakers?

Oh, yeah. Well, I would say 90 to 95 percent of them, yeah. So it is an age gap then, surely, or a life experience gap. Maybe that’s the better way to put it. They just haven’t done enough reading yet, right? Throwing any babies out with bathwater. Give them a few more decades and they’ll encounter it.

But I bet they’re all seeing it now. They’ve all seen it a million times since they heard you say it.

Yeah. Well, I remember—well, I didn’t use it again.

Okay. Because it really—it seemed to create discomfort. It’s almost like the imagery made them uncomfortable. And I thought, well, there’s got to be a better way to say the same idea.

Okay. I really couldn’t think of something that—certainly that memorable or that catchy or that impactful.

Well, you know, I had the same experience when I was five years old of being traumatized by my mother saying something about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But I was five years old. I wasn’t 20.

Yeah. Well, I don’t know. I was really surprised by it. And that’s what prompted my call. And also, I got a little bit worried because I thought, are we losing something here?

Well, the language is always in flux and we can’t hold on to everything. So, yeah, some stuff goes, some stuff stays, and it’s hard to control which is which.

But I will tell you, there’s a great history on this expression that will scratch every itch you ever had about the expression, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There is a chapter, an entire chapter, about 25 pages, in a book by Wolfgang Mieder. It’s German, I believe. It’s called Proverbs are Never Out of Season.

And the entire chapter is about the history of don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. To summarize this whole amazing article, I mean, again, if you’ve ever wanted to get into etymological research, this chapter is perfect. He traces it back to a writer in German who used it in 1512. His name was Thomas Murner.

And then it was borrowed by Thomas Carlyle into English in the 1850s in one of his books. And Thomas Carlyle probably was the popularizer of the expression in English. And most of the uses we have all seem to derive from somebody who was aware or familiar with or a fan of Carlyle. And then it’s been used ever since.

What’s really interesting is there’s a woodcut in the original 1512 book showing a woman throwing out the baby with the bathwater. So in German, it literally meant the same thing that it means in English. You know, some people have always been bothered by that violent imagery of a baby, you know, falling to the ground in the gray suds of soap or whatever.

But I could see how they might have a little bit of problem if they weren’t familiar with it. But the thing is, it is supposed to horrify you. You are supposed to think that that’s a bad thing to do.

I don’t know what to say, but I was surprised that none of my students had heard that before. Can you think of an alternative?

Yeah, there’s some old alternatives. Well, obviously, as Wolfgang Mieder says, there’s the really bland to throw the good away with the bad. But who wants to say that? There’s no color in life in that. He also lists to throw the helv after the hatchet, which basically means to throw the handle and the blade away at the same time, right? And to throw the wheat with the chaff.

So instead of the stuff that you don’t want, you’re also throwing out the stuff that you do want, the wheat seeds, the wheat germ. So those are the ones that he suggests.

Well, I’ve made notes. I’ll try to integrate that into my lecture.

Yeah, Constance, I hear an extra credit assignment coming on. I think you should assign that article to all your students. Seriously.

Well, if I can link it to business law somehow, maybe I’ll be able to do that. Thanks for the information. I appreciate the show. Take care.

Take care. Bye-bye. Keep up the good work. Bye. Bye-bye.

So we’re going to give you the assignment to teach Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater to the people around you, including your kids and grandkids. And we’ve got another assignment, which is to give us a call, 877-929-9673, or to send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.