“Hot Potato”
💭 Meaning
A “hot potato” is a controversial or awkward issue that nobody wants to deal with, so it gets passed from person to person to avoid responsibility. It's also used for something you'd drop quickly to avoid trouble (“drop it like a hot potato").
✍️ Examples
The question of legacy admissions became a hot potato at the staff meeting, with every department hoping someone else would answer it.
Henry's student dropped the idea of writing about a family argument like a hot potato once he explained how it could come across to readers.
Henry thinks writing about test-optional policies is a hot potato, since the rules keep changing from school to school.
📜 Origin
The phrase comes from the plain fact that a freshly cooked potato holds heat for a long time, so anyone handed one would toss it along rather than get burned. English speakers were using “hot potato" figuratively by the 19th century, and the related expression “drop like a hot potato" described abandoning something at once. The children's game of the same name, where players pass an object around while music plays and whoever holds it when the music stops is out, helped keep the image familiar. By the 20th century, “hot potato" was a common way to describe a touchy topic, especially in politics and business, that everyone wants someone else to handle. Exact first uses are hard to pin down, but the literal root is clear.
