Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A inextricable situation or difficult and pressing problem that often grows worse as one tries to deal with it.
- noun Offensive Slang Used as a disparaging term for a black person, especially a dark-skinned black child.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[After “Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby,” an Uncle Remus story by Joel Chandler Harris in which Brer Fox makes a doll out of tar and Brer Rabbit gets stuck in it when he punches it after it does not return his greeting.]
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Examples
Sorry, no example sentences found.
kalidas commented on the word tar baby
definition: something from which it is nearly impossible to extricate oneself
January 1, 2007
amcd56 commented on the word tar baby
racially derogatory term - ugh
June 26, 2007
muamor commented on the word tar baby
I just have to hope the cat in question does not care.
June 26, 2007
treeseed commented on the word tar baby
Tar-Baby was a doll made of tar and turpentine, used to entrap Br'er Rabbit in the second of the Uncle Remus stories. The more that Br'er Rabbit fought the Tar-Baby, the more entangled he became. In contemporary usage, a tar baby refers to any "sticky situation" that is only aggravated by efforts to solve it.
_Wikipedia
February 18, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word tar baby
In tiddlywinks, "a pile under your own control, but into which your winks seem to be sucked entirely inadvertently. A tactical nightmare."
August 27, 2008
michaelt42 commented on the word tar baby
Something to be circumvented: a sticky situation or problem from which it is almost impossible to escape, which proves that it is entirely possible to end a definition of tar baby without using a preposition.
May 8, 2013