xkcd #2942: Fluid Speech
Alt text:
Thank you to linguist Gretchen McCulloch for teaching me about phonetic assimilation, and for teaching me that if you stand around in public reading texts from a linguist and murmuring example phrases to yourself, people will eventually ask if you're okay.
Are you the alien? Nobody calls a potato for eating hot potato... If you're eating a potato it's going to be hot. Hot potato is referring to the game where you pass something along very quickly. It's saying you're all passing something along that no one wants to get caught with or stuck with, and it's almost never literally, it's usually taking about a responsibility being passed or something like that.
Potato salad has entered the chat.