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goldfish bowl

 - 2 dictionary results
goldfish bowl

noun
1. a state of affairs in which you have no privacy; "the president lives in a goldfish bowl" 
2. a transparent bowl in which small fish are kept [syn: fishbowl
WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.
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Idioms & Phrases

goldfish bowl

A situation affording no privacy, as in Being in a goldfish bowl comes with the senator's jobthere's no avoiding it. The glass bowl allowing one to view goldfish from every direction was transferred first, in the 1920s, to a police interrogation room equipped with a one-way mirror. By the mid-1900s the expression was being used more broadly.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
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