million-dollar question

See also: million dollar question

English

Alternative forms

• $1,000,000 question
• million dollar question

Etymology

From the TV game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, because in the last question the contestants attempt to win a top prize of $1,000,000.

Noun

million-dollar question (plural million-dollar questions)

1. (figurative) A question that is very important or difficult to answer.
   • 2014, Barend Beekhuizen, Rens Bod, Arie Verhagen, “The linking problem is a special case of a general problem none of us has solved: Commentary on Ambridge, Pine, and Lieven”, in Language, volume 90, number 3, page e92:

     The million-dollar question is what mechanisms and representations (potentially unlearned, potentially domain-specific) exist so that the learner, given the input, gradually comes to behave like an adult language user.

Synonyms

• billion-dollar question
• sixty-four thousand dollar question
• sixty-four dollar question

Translations

Translations

• Dutch: hamvraag (nl) f
• French: la question à un million
• Galician: a pregunta do millón
• German: Preisfrage (de) f
• Russian: вопрос на миллион (vopros na million)
• Spanish: la pregunta del millón
• Swedish: tiotusenkronorsfråga c