Meaning
A controversial or awkward question that nobody wants to handle, because touching it brings blame, trouble or political damage; often found as 'a political hot potato'. The older simile 'drop someone or something like a hot potato' means to abandon it instantly and completely. Informal but acceptable in journalism; vivid rather than offensive. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The image needs no explanation to anyone who has grabbed a baked potato straight from the oven: it scalds, so it gets dropped or frantically passed along. The earliest figurative use traced so far is British - 'But drop it - like a hot potatoe' in the comic poem Paddy Hew (1815) - followed by a cluster of 1810s and 1820s citations, several attributing the simile to Irish speakers, with American newspaper appearances from 1820. The noun use for a controversial issue is later; Merriam-Webster dates that sense to 1950. The same scalding image was later borrowed for the children's game in which an object is tossed around before the count ends.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a political hot potato
- drop it like a hot potato
- hot-potato issue
- pass along the hot potato
Usage Examples
- Closing the village school has become a political hot potato that no councillor wants to be left holding.
- When the auditors arrived, the partners dropped the offshore venture like a hot potato.
- Succession planning was passed around the executive team like a hot potato for nearly three years.