white elephant

noun

1. a possession unwanted by the owner but difficult to dispose of.

   Our Victorian bric-a-brac and furniture were white elephants.

2. 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.

3. an abnormally whitish or pale elephant, usually found in Thailand; an albino elephant.

white elephant

noun

1. a rare albino or pale grey variety of the Indian elephant, regarded as sacred in parts of S Asia

2. a possession that is unwanted by its owner

3. an elaborate venture, construction, etc, that proves useless

4. a rare or valuable possession the upkeep of which is very expensive

white elephant

1. An unwanted or financially burdensome possession, or a project that turns out to be of limited value: “The new office building turned out to be a white elephant once the company decided to move its headquarters.”

Word History and Origins

Origin of white elephant¹

First recorded in 1850–55; from the perhaps apocryphal tale that the King of Siam would award a disagreeable courtier a white elephant, the upkeep of which would ruin the courtier

Idioms and Phrases

An unwanted or useless item, as in The cottage at the lake had become a real white elephant—too run down to sell, yet costly to keep up, or Grandma's ornate silver is a white elephant; no one wants it but it's too valuable to discard. This expression comes from a legendary former Siamese custom whereby an albino elephant, considered sacred, could only be owned by the king. The king would bestow such an animal on a subject with whom he was displeased and wait until the high cost of feeding the animal, which could not be slaughtered, ruined the owner. The story was told in England in the 1600s, and in the 1800s the term began to be used figuratively.

Example Sentences

Not even the banks know what to do with this gargantuan white elephant.

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Lord Forsyth described the project as "a complete white elephant and a disaster" and Leader of the House Baroness Smith of Basildon called the situation "unacceptable".

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“This will turn into a total white elephant,” said Capellán, president of the industrial park near the Dominican Republic.

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He added: "The only way that the government can afford this white elephant would be to take money from all the other nations and regions in the UK."

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During a debate in the House of Lords, Conservative peer Lord Forsyth called the project a "complete white elephant and a disaster".

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Related Words

• albatross 
• encumbrance