red diaper baby
1
9.9
- noun
- /rɛd ˈdaɪpər ˈbeɪbi/
- Slang
:
niño de pañales rojos
- Growing up as a red diaper baby, she inherited her parents' strong beliefs in social justice.
I was a red diaper baby since my mother was a card carrying member of the Communist Party and I have her FBI file, FBI file to prove it.
- I was a red diaper baby since my mother was a card carrying member of the Communist Party and I have her FBI file, FBI file to prove it.
Examples
-
Gilbert said Obama "needed the Kenyan father fairy tale to misdirect the public away from the fact that he is a red diaper baby, the child of a Communist Party USA propagandist and Soviet agent."
Blog text (27) -
"Barack Obama's a born red-diaper baby.
Blog text (8) -
I was a red diaper baby since my mother was a card carrying member of the Communist Party and I have her FBI file, FBI file to prove it.
-
He was a red diaper baby, shaped by the leftist discussions that filled his childhood home.
-
As a proud red diaper baby, she often shares stories of her parents' activism during the Cold War.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is a culturally specific idiom referring to someone raised by politically leftist/Communist parents; this meaning is not straightforwardly compositional from 'red' + 'diaper' + 'baby'. Even if a learner knows 'red' in its political sense and the words 'diaper' and 'baby', the parental-upbringing nuance and idiomatic usage are not predictably derived, making it opaque.
Etymology
Red diaper baby may come from a simple image: red was a common word for communist ideas and diaper shows a child born into that home. So it now means someone 'raised in a leftist or radical home', especially the child of Communist or socialist parents.