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An albatross around one's neckMeaningA burden which some unfortunate person has to carry. Origin
Coleridge published the work in 1798, in the collection of poems that is generally accepted as being the starting point of the Romantic movement in English literature - Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems:
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This phrase refers to lines from the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
in which the eponymous mariner, who shoots an albatross, is obliged to carry the burden of the bird hung
around his neck, as a punishment for and reminder of his ill deed. 
