Albatross (metaphor)

This article is about the word as a metaphor. For other uses, see Albatross (disambiguation).
The albatross visits the Mariner and his crew in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, illustrated in 1876 by Gustave Doré.

The word albatross is sometimes used metaphorically to mean a psychological burden (most often associated with guilt or shame) that feels like a curse. It is an allusion to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798).[1]

  1. ^ "An albatross around one's neck". The Phrase Finder. Retrieved 27 December 2011.