Sunday, December 3, 2017

white elephant

A possession that is useless or troublesome, especially one that is expensive to maintain or difficult to dispose of.
‘a huge white elephant of a house that needed ten thousand spent on it’

Origin
From the story that the kings of Siam gave such animals as a gift to courtiers they disliked, in order to ruin the recipient by the great expense incurred in maintaining the animal.

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