hot potato

🌎Region: International 📊Difficulty Level:intermediate

💡Meaning

A controversial or risky issue that is hard to deal with because handling it may cause trouble.

🕰️Origin

From the idea of a very hot potato that you can’t hold for long and quickly pass along; figuratively, a sensitive issue people avoid taking responsibility for. The image appears in English by the 19th century.

📝Notes

Often used in politics or workplaces for a sensitive, controversial matter people avoid owning. Implies risk/blame and being passed from person to person.

💬Examples

The mayor avoided the hot potato of raising property taxes until after the election.
The company handed the hot potato of the data breach to an outside PR firm.
Immigration has become a political hot potato in this campaign.
As soon as the budget cuts were mentioned, the issue turned into a hot potato in the meeting.
No one wanted to touch the hot potato of who should be laid off first.

📘Grammar & Usage Notes

Usually used as a noun phrase: “a hot potato,” “the hot potato,” or “a political hot potato.” Common patterns: “become/turn into a hot potato,” “treat as a hot potato,” “pass (it) like a hot potato.”

🔗Synonyms

sensitive issue
thorny issue
controversial issue
political football
third rail

↔️Antonyms

nonissue
open-and-shut case
safe bet