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What does white elephant mean idiom?
noun. a possession unwanted by the owner but difficult to dispose of: Our Victorian bric-a-brac and furniture were white elephants. a possession entailing great expense out of proportion to its usefulness or value to the owner: When he bought the mansion he didn’t know it was going to be such a white elephant.
How do you use white elephant in a sentence?
1. The new office block has become an expensive white elephant. 2. The dam has become something of a white elephant.
What’s another term for white elephant?
In this page you can discover 11 synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, and related words for white-elephant, like: junk, more trouble than it’s worth, worthless object, burthen, onus, clutter, outmoded object, heirloom, albatross, ball-and-chain and burden.
Why is Thailand called white elephant?
The term derives from the sacred white elephants kept by Southeast Asian monarchs in Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. Because the animals were considered sacred and laws protected them from labor, receiving a gift of a white elephant from a monarch was simultaneously a blessing and a curse.
What’s another name for Dirty Santa?
A white elephant gift exchange, Yankee swap or Dirty Santa is a party game where amusing and impractical gifts are exchanged during festivities.
What does purple elephant mean?
The meaning behind the ‘The Purple Elephant’. The symbolism of Alzheimer’s is the color purple and an elephant. It tends to be the last color that Alzheimer’s patients forget. The elephant is a symbol because that is the only animal that will never forget anything.
What does Blue elephant mean?
The Blue Elephant in the Room is a national anti-stigma campaign designed to address the stigma associated with mental Illness. Displaying a blue elephant shows that you care about the wellness of others and demonstrates that this is a safe place to talk about mental illness, without fear of being viewed differently.
What does the white elephant symbolize in Buddhism?
The white elephant, according to Buddhist belief, represents the penultimate incarnation of Gautama Buddha before he was born to Queen Maya. U Toke Gale, Burma’s leading elephant expert, explained: “The white elephant has always been a symbol not just of Buddhism, but of prestige, prosperity and political power.”
Do white elephants really exist?
A white elephant (also albino elephant) is a rare kind of elephant, but not a distinct species. The traditional “white elephant” is commonly misunderstood as being albino, but the Thai term chang samkhan, actually translates as ‘auspicious elephant’, being “white” in terms of an aspect of purity.
Why do they call it Yankee Swap?
A more heart-warming origin claim is that Americans – once called “Yankees” by immigrants in New York City – would give each other trivial gifts in marketplaces. It was, quite literally, “Yankees Swapping gifts.” Today, Yankee Swap is practiced across the globe – reaching far beyond the Big Apple.
How do you play rob your neighbor?
In case you don’t know this game, it’s a holiday tradition around these parts in which everyone brings a wrapped gift of nominal value (in this case, $10 or less). You then sit around a table and everyone takes a turn either opening one of the gifts on the table, or “robbing” an already opened gift from someone else.