ticking bomb

1. 1.

   a problematic situation that will eventually become dangerous if not addressed

   “India is a demographic time bomb”

   “the refugee camp is a ticking bomb waiting to go off”

   Synonymstime bomb

   Broadersituation

Questions about ticking bomb

What does ticking bomb mean?

ticking bomb means "a problematic situation that will eventually become dangerous if not addressed".

What is another word for ticking bomb?

Close synonyms include time bomb. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is ticking bomb a common word?

ticking bomb 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.