“An albatross around your neck” comes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In the story, a sailor kills an albatross, a seabird that had been seen as a good sign. As punishment, the dead bird is hung around his neck.
Because of that image, the expression later came to mean a heavy burden, especially one connected to guilt, blame, or the lasting effects of a bad decision.
Today, people usually use it figuratively, not literally. It often describes something from the past that keeps causing trouble in the present.
- Personal use: “That lie became an albatross around his neck.”
- Business use: “The failed merger was an albatross around the company’s neck.”
A similar idea is a burden or a millstone, but this expression often carries a stronger sense of past wrongdoing or a mistake that will not go away.