<P> Skeleton in the closet or skeleton in the cupboard is a colloquial phrase and idiom used to describe an undisclosed fact about someone which, if revealed, would have a negative impact on perceptions of the person; it hyperbolically evokes the idea of someone having had a (presumedly human) corpse concealed in their home so long that it had decomposed but for its bones . "Cupboard" is used in British English instead of the American English word "closet". It is known to have been used as a phrase, at least as early as November 1816, in the monthly British journal The Eclectic Review, page 468 . It is listed in both the Oxford English Dictionary, and Webster's Dictionary, under the word "skeleton". The "Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary" lists it under this but also as a separate idiom . In the most derisive of usage; murder, or significant culpability in a years - old disappearance or non-understood event (a mystery), may be implied by the phrase . </P>

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