If you hear a German say, "Wir werden das Kind schon schaukeln" (we will rock that child), they aren't referring to an actual baby that needs to be rocked to sleep. The popular idiom is meant to be reassuring: Don't worry, we'll work it out, we will get it sorted.

In this case, both German (Das Kind mit dem Bade ausschütten) and English use the same image for behavior or measures that are too drastic. The idiom warns of getting rid of something valuable while discarding other things that are undesirable.

This German idiom doesn't use bathwater, but a deep well: "Das Kind ist in den Brunnen gefallen" literally means, the child has fallen into the well. German language speakers use the term to say that it is too late, the damage is done.

The German term "mit Kind und Kegel" translates literally as "with child and tenpin." The German word "Kegel" for tenpin used to refer to a child whose parents were not married. If you have "Kid und Kegel" along, it simply means you have brought the whole family.

The German idiom expressing the idea that the older people get the more set in their ways they become is "Was Hänschen nicht lernt, lernt Hans nimmermehr" (Hans will never learn what little Hans hasn't learned). When a child, a boy named Hans would be called by the diminutive Hänschen, little Hans.

Older people who like to play like kids, and get just as immersed, or are prone to childish behavior are sometimes called "Kindskopf" (child's head). German 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche coined the phrase in his philosophical novel, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra": "In a real man a child is hidden: it wants to play."

The colloquial German idiom for a situation where a person surprisingly gets something without having contributed in any way is "wie die Jungfrau zum Kinde." It literally means, like the virgin had a child. According to Christian doctrine, Mary gave birth to Jesus Christ through such immaculate conception.