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The word albatross is sometimes used to mean an encumbrance, or a wearisome burden.^[1] It is an allusion to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798).

In the poem, an albatross starts to follow a ship, and is seen as a good omen. However the titular mariner shoots the albatross with a crossbow, and is made to wear the bird around his neck as a penance by his shipmates.

Ah ! well a-day ! what evil looks

Had I from old and young !

Instead of the cross, the Albatross

About my neck was hung.

This sense is catalogued in the Oxford English Dictionary from 1936 and 1955, but it seems only to have entered general usage in the 1960s.

Also, the word albatross is used in page six of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, in which Robert Walton is speaking to his sister through a letter and states,"...but I shall kill no albatross,...", this is like an allusion to an allusion. An albatross in this case is also referring to Smauel Taylor Coleridge's poem (above)

The experimental Scottish-born/British musician, Momus (Nick Currie), alludes to this metaphor in his 1988 song "The Charm of Innocence." The refrain is:

I was born with the charm of innocence

On my back like a cross

Thorns upon my forehead

Round my neck I wore it

Sometimes a rabbit's claw

Sometimes an albatross

The British rock group Pink Floyd made a reference to an albatross in their 1970 song "Echoes"

over head the albatross, hangs motionless upon the air

Devendra Banhart mentions the albatross in his song "Little Yellow Spider"

And hey there, little albatross, swimming in the air Ah c'mon, you know I can't fly And I, I think we really oughta play fair

• A cartoon appearing in The Economist newspaper that alludes to the described metaphor.