Skeleton in the closet

Common card · No. 471951

Skeleton in the closet (or in British English skeleton in the cupboard) is a colloquial phrase and idiom used to describe an undisclosed fact about someone which, if revealed, would damage perceptions of the person. It evokes the idea of someone having had a human corpse concealed in their home so long that all its flesh had decomposed to the bone. It is known to have been used as a phrase as early as at least November 1816. In the most derisive of usage, murder, or significant culpability in a years-old disappearance or non-understood event (a mystery), may be implied by the phrase.

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