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Imbroglio

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(pronounced im-brohl-yoh)  noun

Definition

1. a deeply embarrassing or regrettable misunderstanding; an extremely complicated, confused, or bitter disagreement (as between individuals or countries).    2. a complicated, confusing, or intricate situation; an involved, perplexing, or troublesome state of affairs.

Main Example

• You must have heard of the so-called “top-secret 28 pages” (a segment within a 2003 congressional report) which the American public has never seen and which supposedly point to official Saudi support for some of the 9/11 hijackers. Under pressure from the government of Saudi Arabia--a vital ally of the United States--both the Bush and Obama administrations have kept those 28 pages under seal. But now, thanks to prodding by family members of 9/11 victims, there is a bill in Congress demanding that the government declassify those mysterious pages. Expect a decision from the White House on this “28-page imbroglio” later this summer.

Workplace Examples

• Relations between our manufacturing and marketing managers are pretty prickly these days; they are barely on speaking terms. Each believes the other is out to undermine him. I thinks it's about time that their boss, the executive VP, intervened to resolve the imbroglio which is clearly hurting the company.
• Just had a thought about that situation in your family you were telling me about earlier. It's so darn complicated, what with all those misunderstandings and perceived slights that go back decades; why don't you seek the advice of someone like Dear Abby? I'm serious! Many of the letters published in that column are about family imbroglios such as yours.

Other Examples

• an ethical imbroglio that was facing the University of Oklahoma for the past four years--it involved a Pissarro painting gifted to the University in good faith by a leading Oklahoma family, which did not know of the work's Nazi-looted past--being resolved amicably a couple of months ago
• Shakespeare's “As You Like It” -- a play filled with complicated love affairs and masked identities as a result of which the characters are constantly getting into imbroglios
• some diplomatic imbroglios in recent years that must have resulted in difficult fence-mending for the State Department: reports that the NSA had tapped into German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone; U.S. aircraft stealthily entering Pakistan in the dead of night to eliminate Osama bin Laden; Defense Secretary Ash Carter publicly saying “The Iraqi army has no will to fight”
• the famous imbroglio in the U.N. Security Council just before the 2003 attack on Iraq, when France heatedly--and, in retrospect, rightly--opposed U.S. plans to invade that Middle East nation

© 2017 V.J. Singal
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