tunnel

The end to something difficult or unpleasant. I've been working on this book for over a year, but I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Now that the doctors have been able to diagnose what's wrong with me, there is finally light at the end of the tunnel.

To conceptualize or foresee an end to something difficult or unpleasant; to be relatively near to the end or conclusion of some problem or difficulty. I've been working on this book for over a year, but I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Now that the doctors have been able to diagnose what's wrong with me, we might finally be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

To dig a passageway underneath someone or something. We've had a real problem with groundhogs tunneling under our lawn. The only way we'll get past those guards is by tunneling under them.

to make a tunnel or passageway through something or a group of people. Roger had to tunnel through the crowd to get to the rest room. The workers tunneled through the soft soil to reach the buried cable.

to dig a tunnel under someone or something. All the time she was standing in the yard talking about the moles, they were tunneling under her. They took many months to tunnel under the English Channel.

The end of a difficult situation or task, the solution to a difficult problem. For example, It's taken three years to effect this merger, but we're finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel . This metaphoric expression dates from the 1800s, but became widespread only in the mid-1900s.

COMMON If there is light at the end of the tunnel, there is hope that a difficult situation might be coming to an end. After horrific times we are seeing light at the end of the tunnel. People feel hopeless. They don't see any light at the end of the tunnel.

COMMON If someone has tunnel vision, they use all their energy and skill on something that is important to them and ignore other important things. Unfortunately, government departments tend to exhibit extreme tunnel vision. It is often beyond their capacity to appreciate or support something if it benefits more than one department. Note: This expression can also be used to show admiration for someone who has achieved a lot by concentrating on a single thing. They always say that you have to have tunnel vision to be a champion. You can't have any outside distractions at all. Note: You can also use tunnel-vision before a noun. The experts sometimes have a bureaucratic, tunnel-vision view of their mission. Note: Tunnel vision is a medical condition in which someone can only see things that are immediately in front of them, and cannot see things that are to the side.

The prospect of success, relief, or escape after strenuous effort.

A solution emerges at long last. This metaphor, evoking the end of a long, dark mining or railroad tunnel, came into widespread use only in the mid-twentieth century. It was used by President John F. Kennedy in a 1962 press conference on the Vietnam War and became common throughout that conflict. However, the image was used nearly a century earlier in a letter by English novelist George Eliot, and the expression also appeared in a letter from J. Middleton Murry to his wife, Katherine Mansfield (1922): “I begin to feel that the horror may move away and that there is a big round spot of real daylight at the end of the tunnel.”

A very narrow view, inability to see beyond a limited viewpoint. The term, dating from the mid-1900s, transfers the physiological inability to see peripheral objects to a mental outlook. For example, “Preble had the ghetto mind and the tunnel vision of a committed social climber” (T. Barling, Goodbye Piccadilly, 1980).