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Glite Dictionary
to hold the baby

to hold the baby

1 8.8
To have the only responsibility for a hard problem when others avoid it
  • idiom
  • Informal
translation icon : cargar con el problema

Examples

  • Can I hold the baby?

    Mary Magdalene (2018)

  • He held the baby in his arms and died on the way home.

    Downton Abbey: A New Era (2022)

  • When everyone else left the problem unsolved, I had to hold the baby and take responsibility for the project.

  • After her colleagues abandoned the task, she was left to hold the baby and find a solution on her own.

  • In a difficult situation, it was my turn to hold the baby and ensure everything went smoothly.

Synonyms

to hold down the fort
vsto hold the baby
  • Informal
19 4.5

Take care of a place or job while someone is away

implies being abandoned with a difficult problem rather than routine duty
to hold the bag
vsto hold the baby
  • Informal
11 8.8

End up responsible for the blame or a problem others avoid

focuses on being left with responsibility rather than on blame
left holding the baby
vsto hold the baby
  • Informal
1 9.1

Being the only person who must deal with a problem after others avoid it

has identical meaning but appears as a short idiomatic expression

Antonyms

to evade
31 3.9

To avoid doing something you should do, for example a duty or a direct question

How Responsible

to hold the baby
  • Informal
1 8.8
help
∞ 1.0
sharing
99 1.0

Surface Forms

hold the baby infinitive
holding the baby present participle
holds the baby third person singular
held the baby past
held the baby past participle

Morphology

hold + the + baby

The literal image of 'holding a baby' conveys taking care or responsibility, so a learner who knows 'hold' and 'baby' can partly infer a responsibility-related meaning. However, the specific pragmatic sense of being left with an unwanted or sole responsibility (often phrased 'left holding the baby') is an idiomatic extension not fully predictable from the parts, so it is only partially transparent.

Etymology

The idiom hold the baby may come from the simple image of one person left holding a crying baby while everyone else walks away. That's why the phrase now means 'to be left with a difficult responsibility'.