throw the baby out with the bathwater

Meaning

Verb

• To discard, especially inadvertently, something valuable while in the process of removing or rejecting something unwanted.

Origin

• From a German proverb that dates to 1512. First recorded by Thomas Murner in his satire Narrenbeschwörung. First appeared in English when Thomas Carlyle translated it and used it in an 1849 essay on slavery.