Meanings
plural babylifts
- 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 1084 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 112There 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 30Over 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 802Holt 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
babylift. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/babylift
“babylift.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/babylift. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “babylift,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/babylift.
Source: babylift on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.