can of worms in English

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{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "can of worms",
      "raw_tags": [
        "Expression"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "expansion": "[POS TABLE]",
      "name": "expression"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "If someone gets a promotion that might not be deserved, it could open up a whole can of worms with the other employees."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "If a situation is described as a can of worms, the situation is complex or troublesome as a decision to correct a problem leads to many more problems."
      ],
      "id": "simple-can_of_worms-en-phrase-dK4mu5K8",
      "raw_tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "kettle of fish"
        },
        {
          "word": "Pandora's box"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-can of worms.ogg",
      "raw_tags": [
        "Audio"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "can of worms"
}

[Show JSON for raw wiktextract data ▼] [Hide JSON for raw wiktextract data ▲]

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "can of worms",
      "raw_tags": [
        "Expression"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "expansion": "[POS TABLE]",
      "name": "expression"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "If someone gets a promotion that might not be deserved, it could open up a whole can of worms with the other employees."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "If a situation is described as a can of worms, the situation is complex or troublesome as a decision to correct a problem leads to many more problems."
      ],
      "raw_tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "kettle of fish"
        },
        {
          "word": "Pandora's box"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-can of worms.ogg",
      "raw_tags": [
        "Audio"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "can of worms"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-01-25 from the simplewiktionary dump dated 2025-01-20 using wiktextract (c15a5ce and 5c11237). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.

"can of worms" meaning in English

Phrase