albatross around one's neck
2
8.6
- idiom
- Informal
:
carga
- Hillary now wears Benghazi as an albatross around her neck.
Examples
-
Governor Romney did have an albatross around his neck.
Blog text (4) -
You look like a man with an albatross around his neck.
-
Our legal process has become an albatross around our necks and a key element that stifles growth.
Blog text (20) -
Over the years, she had become an albatross around his neck, dragging him down and inducing in him an unfamiliar state of depression.
Fiction book (1996) -
Nevertheless, over the years, our legal process has become an albatross around our necks—a key element that stifles growth.
Blog text (20) -
His constant worry about financial stability has become an albatross around his neck.
-
The lingering guilt from his past mistakes felt like an albatross around her neck.
-
After the scandal, the negative publicity turned into an albatross around the company's neck.
Synonyms
482
3.4
A heavy load or something that causes worry and difficulty
13
7.3
A heavy feeling of worry and responsibility
6
8.4
A heavy problem that stays and keeps causing worry or trouble
5
8.1
A heavy burden that makes life hard
2
8.7
A problem that stays with you and causes worry
Antonyms
How Burdensome
7
7.5
- Informal
2
8.6
482
3.4
∞
1.2
62
3.6
Surface Forms
Morphology
albatross + around + one + neck
The phrase uses the clear spatial image 'around one's neck,' which signals something burdensome or hanging on a person and can cue a learner to a meaning of burden if they know the words. However, the specific choice of 'albatross' as a metaphorical symbol of persistent guilt or obligation comes from a literary/cultural source and is not an obviously derivable property of the literal bird for many learners, so the full idiomatic sense is not fully predictable.
Etymology
Albatross around one's neck comes from an old poem where a sailor killed an albatross and the crew hung the dead bird around his neck as a punishment. So the picture of a heavy bird he could not remove became a way to say 'a constant and burdensome problem'.