babylift

B3A1B3Y4L1I1F4T1

noun

The evacuation of foreign children from abroad into a country for adoption.

Scrabble 18

Meanings

nounbabylift (plural babylifts)

plural babylifts

  1. The evacuation of foreign children from abroad into a country for adoption.

    They believe there was collusion between Lockheed and its friends in the Air Force to use the babylift to give the C-5 publicity.

    2001, Danny Schechter, News Dissector: Passions, Pieces, and Polemics, page 108
    4 more examples

    The second prong of my effort, Plan B, was to try to provide some help for the 2000 babylift children we had already brought to America.

    1978, Elwyn James Anthony, Colette Chiland, Children and their parents in a changing world, page 112

    There are ominous implications for babylift children in the story of Leigh Marsh, an adopted Korean child who lost eight years in the Connecticut public school system.

    1978, Gerald G. Hotchiss, Psychology Today, page 30

    Over the next few weeks, on the Pan Am 747s and on military flights that followed, about 1,400 orphans rode the babylift to America.

    1995, Newsweek - Volume 125, page 802

    Holt speeded up its efforts when the end of the war became imminent but kept a distance from the babylift by refusing an offer to use military transport planes.

    2010, Cheri Register, Are Those Kids Yours?: American Families With Children Adopted From Other Countries, →ISBN

Origin

From the name of Operation Babylift.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

babylift. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/babylift

MLA

“babylift.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/babylift. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “babylift,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/babylift.

Source: babylift on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.