<P> Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater is an idiomatic expression for an avoidable error in which something good is eliminated when trying to get rid of something bad, or in other words, rejecting the favorable along with the unfavorable . </P> <P> A slightly different explanation suggests this flexible catchphrase has to do with discarding the essential while retaining the superfluous because of excessive zeal . In other words, the idiom is applicable not only when throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but also when someone might throw out the baby and keep the bathwater . </P> <P> This idiom derives from a German proverb, das Kind mit dem Bade ausschütten . The earliest record of this phrase is in 1512, in Narrenbeschwörung (Appeal to Fools) by Thomas Murner; and this book includes a woodcut illustration showing a woman tossing a baby out with waste water . It is a common catchphrase in German, with examples of its use in work by Martin Luther, Johannes Kepler, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Otto von Bismarck, Thomas Mann, and Günter Grass . </P> <P> Thomas Carlyle adapted the concept in an 1849 essay on slavery: </P>

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