[usuallysing.] a thing that is useless and no longer needed, although it may have cost a lot of money:
The new office block has become an expensive white elephant.
ORIGIN From the story that in Siam (now Thailand), the king would give a white elephant as a present to somebody that he did not like. That person would have to spend all their money on looking after the rare animal.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
Where does this definition of white elephant come from?
This entry for white elephant is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is white elephant a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, white elephant is tagged as noun.
Does white elephant appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — white elephant appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
