can of worms

1. 1.

   a source of unpredictable trouble and complexity

   Broadertrouble

   colloquialism

Questions about can of worms

What does can of worms mean?

can of worms means "a source of unpredictable trouble and complexity".

Is can of worms a common word?

can of worms is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.