to bury the lead
4
8.4
- idiom
- /ˈbɛri ðə lid/
- Jargon
:
ocultar lo importante
- In his article, the writer really buried the lead by waiting until the last paragraph to mention the scandal.
- burying the lead here
Frank, you are burying the lead here.
- Frank, you are burying the lead here.
- But this chance encounter, I'm not going to bury the lead here, led to us then making this show.
- I, I feel like in some ways you're, you're burying the lead here because I feel like you're saying that the book has sold you, Tom, on bureaucrats.
- Obviously we, we're not burying the lead because everyone knows who's on that list today and they are all symbol manipulators.
Examples
-
In the story, the reporter buried the lead—that the pitcher had thrown a perfect game—near the bottom of the story.
Blog text (11) -
But this chance encounter, I'm not going to bury the lead here, led to us then making this show.
-
The Terms of Service got it wrong by "burying the lead"; they started off with a really broad grant that they then limited.
Blog text (8) -
To my supervisor's credit, he didn't bury the lead of this story.
Blog text (2) -
Mr. Toner: Well, you buried the lead, because we're very pleased to have been elected by the UN General Assembly to a second term on the Human Rights Council.
Blog text (3) -
My reservation is this: I think the Times piece, at the very least, buries the lead, and it's possible the Times reporters, like most reporters, still don't get what vote fraud really is or how it works.
Blog text (11) -
The presenter buried the lead during the meeting, failing to highlight the project's budget issues at the beginning.
-
It's crucial not to bury the lead in your report; start with the most important facts to grab your audience's attention.
Synonyms
59
5.3
Show something as less important or serious than it is
1
8.8
Make people focus on something less important to hide a bigger problem
Treat a problem as less important to avoid dealing with it
Antonyms
How Prominent
- US
397
3.7
340
3.3
∞
1.0
59
5.3
- Jargon
4
8.4
66
3.4
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly derivable from combining 'bury' (to cover or hide) with 'lead' (the main or opening story), so a learner who knows both constituents can infer 'to hide or fail to emphasize the main point.' It is a domain-specific journalistic metaphor but follows a straightforward compositional logic rather than an arbitrary idiom.
Etymology
Bury the lead comes from old newspapers. The lead is the first, most important paragraph, and to bury it is to hide that paragraph under less important details. So the phrase means 'to hide the main point' or 'delay saying the most important thing'.