See tar baby on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "Referring to a doll made of tar and turpentine to entrap Br'er Rabbit in one of Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories, published in 1881, from earlier African American folklore, from earlier African (e.g. Kongo) folklore, influenced in America by similar stories from various unrelated Native American tribes, such as the Cherokee, Alabama, Koasati, and Apache. (Similar stories are found throughout the world, e.g. among the Mixtec and Zapotec.)",
"forms": [
{
"form": "tar babies",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "tar baby (plural tar babies)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "American English",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"_dis": "89 11",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "95 5",
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "96 4",
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"text": "2006, Mitt Romney, quoted in \"Romney apologizes for calling Big Dig 'tar baby'\", July 31, 2006, WISTV.com\nMassachusetts 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 from that tar baby as I can.\""
},
{
"ref": "2001, Bobby Delaughter, Never Too Late: A Prosecutor's Story of Justice in the Medgar Evars Case, page 75:",
"text": "If Dees had indicated any willingness to personally pursue the case, Ed would've immediately had him appointed as a special prosecutor and turned this tar baby of a case over to him on the spot.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"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."
],
"id": "en-tar_baby-en-noun-95qnin4v",
"links": [
[
"sticky",
"sticky"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(chiefly 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."
],
"related": [
{
"_dis1": "100 0",
"word": "tarpit"
},
{
"_dis1": "100 0",
"english": "another term related to tar and to trapping or bogging down",
"word": "tar pit"
},
{
"_dis1": "100 0",
"word": "black hole"
},
{
"_dis1": "100 0",
"word": "hot potato"
},
{
"_dis1": "100 0",
"word": "hydra"
},
{
"_dis1": "100 0",
"word": "sticky wicket"
},
{
"_dis1": "100 0",
"word": "quagmire"
},
{
"_dis1": "100 0",
"word": "quicksand"
}
],
"tags": [
"US"
]
},
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English ethnic slurs",
"parents": [
"Ethnic slurs",
"Offensive terms",
"Terms by usage"
],
"source": "w"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A black person."
],
"id": "en-tar_baby-en-noun-PG6l68SO",
"links": [
[
"derogatory",
"derogatory"
],
[
"ethnic",
"ethnic"
],
[
"slur",
"slur"
],
[
"black",
"black"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(derogatory, ethnic slur) A black person."
],
"tags": [
"derogatory",
"ethnic",
"slur"
]
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"Joel Chandler Harris",
"Uncle Remus",
"tar baby"
],
"word": "tar baby"
}
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries"
],
"etymology_text": "Referring to a doll made of tar and turpentine to entrap Br'er Rabbit in one of Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories, published in 1881, from earlier African American folklore, from earlier African (e.g. Kongo) folklore, influenced in America by similar stories from various unrelated Native American tribes, such as the Cherokee, Alabama, Koasati, and Apache. (Similar stories are found throughout the world, e.g. among the Mixtec and Zapotec.)",
"forms": [
{
"form": "tar babies",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "tar baby (plural tar babies)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"related": [
{
"word": "tarpit"
},
{
"english": "another term related to tar and to trapping or bogging down",
"word": "tar pit"
},
{
"word": "black hole"
},
{
"word": "hot potato"
},
{
"word": "hydra"
},
{
"word": "sticky wicket"
},
{
"word": "quagmire"
},
{
"word": "quicksand"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"American English",
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"text": "2006, Mitt Romney, quoted in \"Romney apologizes for calling Big Dig 'tar baby'\", July 31, 2006, WISTV.com\nMassachusetts 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 from that tar baby as I can.\""
},
{
"ref": "2001, Bobby Delaughter, Never Too Late: A Prosecutor's Story of Justice in the Medgar Evars Case, page 75:",
"text": "If Dees had indicated any willingness to personally pursue the case, Ed would've immediately had him appointed as a special prosecutor and turned this tar baby of a case over to him on the spot.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"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."
],
"links": [
[
"sticky",
"sticky"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(chiefly 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."
],
"tags": [
"US"
]
},
{
"categories": [
"English derogatory terms",
"English ethnic slurs"
],
"glosses": [
"A black person."
],
"links": [
[
"derogatory",
"derogatory"
],
[
"ethnic",
"ethnic"
],
[
"slur",
"slur"
],
[
"black",
"black"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(derogatory, ethnic slur) A black person."
],
"tags": [
"derogatory",
"ethnic",
"slur"
]
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"Joel Chandler Harris",
"Uncle Remus",
"tar baby"
],
"word": "tar baby"
}
Download raw JSONL data for tar baby meaning in All languages combined (2.8kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-10-02 using wiktextract (fbeafe8 and 7f03c9b). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.