blow the lid off
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To expose a scandal or secret publicly
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
Tiết lộ một vụ bê bối hoặc bí mật ra công chúng
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: remove the lid from something
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Since we included a short article on this topic in the ' Newsheet ' last year, the lid has been blown off several skeletons in the National closet.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “blow the lid off” mean?
To expose a scandal or secret publicly Literally: remove the lid from something
Is “blow the lid off” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.