Definition

Noun: 1. A small barrel (keg) containing gunpowder or other explosive material: Historically, a container, often made of metal, used to store and transport gunpowder. 2. A situation or place that is extremely volatile and could erupt into violence or conflict at any moment: A metaphorical use describing a circumstance with a high potential for sudden, explosive trouble.

Usage Examples

• The soldiers carefully moved the powder keg away from the campfire.
• The region, with its long-standing ethnic tensions, is a powder keg waiting for a spark.
• The economic inequality and political repression created a social powder keg.
• Storing all those chemicals together turned the warehouse into a powder keg.

Advanced Usage

• "to be sitting on a powder keg": To be in a very dangerous and unstable situation that could become disastrous very easily.
  • With public anger rising, the government is sitting on a powder keg.
• "to light the powder keg" / "to be the spark that ignites the powder keg": Refers to the specific event or action that causes the volatile situation to explode into open conflict or chaos.
  • The arrest of the popular leader was the spark that ignited the regional powder keg.

Variants and Related Words

• Tinderbox (noun): A very similar metaphor for a place or situation that is ready to erupt into violence or flame. (e.g., )
• Flashpoint (noun): The specific point or moment when violence or conflict erupts. (e.g., )

Synonyms

• For the metaphorical sense: Time bomb, volatile situation, cauldron, hotspot.

Related Idioms

• A recipe for disaster: A situation or plan that is very likely to end badly. While similar, this idiom focuses more on the cause, whereas "powder keg" describes the resulting dangerous state.
  • Mixing those two rival groups on one team is a recipe for disaster.

Noun

1. keg (usually made of metal) for gunpowder or blasting powder
2. a potentially explosive state