time bomb
26
4.6
- noun
- /taɪm bɑm/
:
bomba de tiempo
- You're an unhealthy time bomb just waiting to go off.
- a ticking time bomb
The press have been referring to this as a time bomb, but there is no sudden explosion like a bomb.
- The press have been referring to this as a time bomb, but there is no sudden explosion like a bomb.
- And the addiction I see emerging that I don't think is getting enough attention, that just feels like a ticking time bomb to me is online gambling.
- That's one ticking time bomb that played a role in the increasing erosion of confidence in the Soviet Union.
- And he called both of these ticking time bombs scary, really bad.
- And what do you think made you be a ticking time bomb?
- You can feel like a ticking time bomb no matter what stage you are in being a woman.
- And so the whole package is now a really a time bomb for the royal family and filled with poison.
- Why is every single bad Muslim, you know, waiting for who is a good person, waiting for this time bomb of their life?
- You're like, my life is on a ticking time bomb and I need to get this goddamn pill.
Examples
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The city's crumbling infrastructure is a time bomb that could lead to serious disasters if not repaired.
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So we, the whole world has this big demographic time bomb facing him and there's a lot of debt.
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" These folks have been sitting on a time bomb.
Fiction book (2002) -
The debt time bomb is not going to wait for us.
Blog text (30) -
Well, in the meantime we're carrying around a time bomb.
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I tell you, there's a time bomb here just waiting to go off.
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Only the best will take command of what is essentially a floating ecological time bomb.
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And it's like this ticking time bomb because we, we do spend a lot of money on healthcare the both of us.
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Krista, I'm sorry, but I believe you have a time bomb waiting to go off.
Blog text (30) -
We're sitting on a time bomb and you're talking about going out and dusting for prints!
Synonyms
4
4.3
A situation very likely to cause serious trouble
3
5.2
A situation likely to become dangerous soon if people do not fix it
How Dangerous
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound 'time bomb' combines the literal nouns 'time' and 'bomb' to suggest something that will 'explode' or become dangerous after a period — a metaphorical extension that many learners can plausibly infer from the parts. However, the shift from a literal explosive device to an abstract future problem requires figurative inference, so the relation is partially but not fully transparent to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Time bomb used for problems comes from the image of a real time bomb with a clock slowly counting down. A problem that quietly gets worse and may suddenly become very dangerous is like that ticking bomb, so we call it 'a serious problem that will become dangerous in the future'.