Word.ws English Dictionary

white elephants

white elephants is the plural of white elephant.

Meaning of white elephant

Noun

white elephant (plural white elephants)

  1. (figuratively) A possession that is unwanted or is a financial burden; an unprofitable investment.
    • South Australia's "white elephant" was really going to prove a valuable possession after all!1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 140
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see white, elephant.

Questions about white elephants

What is white elephants the plural of?
White elephants is the plural of white elephant.

Words near white elephants in the dictionary

  1. white elephant
  2. white elephant exchange
  3. white elephant exchanges
  4. white elephant sale
  5. white elephant sales
  6. white elephants
  7. white English bulldog
  8. white English bulldogs
  9. White Eyes
  10. white fat
  11. White Father

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: white elephants (page history and authors); white elephant (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “white elephants.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/white_elephants. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.