light at the end of the tunnel
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
A sign of hope or improvement after difficulties
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
Dấu hiệu của hy vọng hoặc cải thiện sau khó khăn
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: a glowing light appearing at the far end of a tunnel
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
By a week before Christmas, I was beginning to see my way across the spare bedroom at home, or the stockroom as my other half styles it, and light at the end of the tunnel.
Markets seem to believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel for the economy and for the battered profits of corporations and financial firms.
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 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “light at the end of the tunnel” mean?
A sign of hope or improvement after difficulties Literally: a glowing light appearing at the far end of a tunnel
Is “light at the end of the tunnel” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.