"babe in the woods" meaning in English

See babe in the woods in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-babe in the woods.ogg [Australia] Forms: babes in the woods [plural]
Etymology: From the ballad "The Children in the Wood". Head templates: {{en-noun|babes in the woods}} babe in the woods (plural babes in the woods)
  1. (idiomatic) A person who is innocent, naive, inexperienced, or helpless, especially with respect to an unfamiliar situation or environment. Tags: idiomatic Categories (topical): People Synonyms: babe in the wood

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for babe in the woods meaning in English (2.4kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "From the ballad \"The Children in the Wood\".",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "babes in the woods",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "babes in the woods"
      },
      "expansion": "babe in the woods (plural babes in the woods)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "People",
          "orig": "en:People",
          "parents": [
            "Human",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1908, Stewart Edward White, chapter 11, in The Riverman",
          "text": "\"Orde, you're all right on the river,\" said Newmark, with a dry little laugh, \"but you're a babe in the woods at this game.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008, Jake Niall, \"‘Weakest link’ no more, Harry shows he's tailor-made,\" The Age (Australia), 8 Sep. (retrieved 23 May 2009)",
          "text": "Taylor is aware of the perception that he is the innocent, exploitable babe in the woods of the Geelong defence."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A person who is innocent, naive, inexperienced, or helpless, especially with respect to an unfamiliar situation or environment."
      ],
      "id": "en-babe_in_the_woods-en-noun-TvgpiMaj",
      "links": [
        [
          "innocent",
          "innocent"
        ],
        [
          "naive",
          "naive"
        ],
        [
          "inexperienced",
          "inexperienced"
        ],
        [
          "helpless",
          "helpless"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A person who is innocent, naive, inexperienced, or helpless, especially with respect to an unfamiliar situation or environment."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "babe in the wood"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-babe in the woods.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/e/ef/En-au-babe_in_the_woods.ogg/En-au-babe_in_the_woods.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/En-au-babe_in_the_woods.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "babe in the woods"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From the ballad \"The Children in the Wood\".",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "babes in the woods",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "babes in the woods"
      },
      "expansion": "babe in the woods (plural babes in the woods)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned",
        "en:People"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1908, Stewart Edward White, chapter 11, in The Riverman",
          "text": "\"Orde, you're all right on the river,\" said Newmark, with a dry little laugh, \"but you're a babe in the woods at this game.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008, Jake Niall, \"‘Weakest link’ no more, Harry shows he's tailor-made,\" The Age (Australia), 8 Sep. (retrieved 23 May 2009)",
          "text": "Taylor is aware of the perception that he is the innocent, exploitable babe in the woods of the Geelong defence."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A person who is innocent, naive, inexperienced, or helpless, especially with respect to an unfamiliar situation or environment."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "innocent",
          "innocent"
        ],
        [
          "naive",
          "naive"
        ],
        [
          "inexperienced",
          "inexperienced"
        ],
        [
          "helpless",
          "helpless"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A person who is innocent, naive, inexperienced, or helpless, especially with respect to an unfamiliar situation or environment."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-babe in the woods.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/e/ef/En-au-babe_in_the_woods.ogg/En-au-babe_in_the_woods.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/En-au-babe_in_the_woods.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "babe in the wood"
    }
  ],
  "word": "babe in the woods"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). 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.