million-dollar question

This collocation and its idiomatic meaning both long predate the TV game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, whose last question involves a top prize of $1,000,000. They also predate the sixty-four thousand dollar question, which came from a TV game show that started in 1955 but clearly was itself influenced by similar existing constructions, including million-dollar question, which had this sense by 1927 at latest. The corpus shows that a burst of heightened popularity for such constructions occurred in the 1940s because of the radio program Take It or Leave It, which contained a sixty-four dollar question. All such collocations naming expensive questions seem to have their ultimate origins in literal instances (with various price tags) as managerial and public-debate issues; various examples of those are seen in publications from the 1910s.

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million-dollar question (plural million-dollar questions)

1. (figurative) A question that is very important, difficult to answer, or (especially) both.

   Alternative forms: million dollar question; $1,000,000 question

   Synonyms: sixty-four dollar question, sixty-four thousand dollar question, billion-dollar question

   • 1927 March 28, “Where the New Boundary Runs”, in Geographic News Bulletin‎^[1], volume 6, number 5, page 1:

     Newfoundland claims on western Labrador rest largely on old regulations for the fur industry. The new official boundary strikes north from Belle Isle Straits, turns west at 52° latitude for 300 miles and then weaves north toward Cape Chidley, encompassing on the way headwaters of all rivers draining east. Such a delimitation doubles the previously accepted Labrador area which was about 120,000 square miles. One reason why the Labrador boundary is a million dollar question may be discovered by journeying up the rock-bound coast to Hamilton Inlet and following that arm of the sea 150 miles inland. There a surprise awaits the American who thinks Niagara's supremacy as a falls is unquestioned. Grand Falls on the Hamilton River is nearly three times as high as Niagara. So mighty is the flow of water that, with the rapids, Grand Falls' potential water power is greater than Niagara's during the summer months.

   • 1946 July, James Mitchell Clarke, “Picking the 9,000”, in Infantry Journal‎^[2], volume 59, number 1, page 11:

     The million dollar question is, of course, which information is important in finding the outstanding leaders? What facts can you get about a good officer that you will not get about a poor officer?

   • 1946 January, Arthur C. Rohn, “Cargo Handling and Its Relation to Ocean Commerce”, in The Log‎^[3], volume 41, number 1, page 91:

     Whatever their advantages or disadvantages, therefore, both hatches and side ports must first be considered from the point of view of seaworthiness of ships in which they are installed. The conditions imposed on these items by ocean-going service are not, however, insurmountable, and it is believed that engineering skill will some day find a satisfactory answer to this million-dollar question.

   • 2014, Barend Beekhuizen, Rens Bod, Arie Verhagen, “The linking problem is a special case of a general problem none of us has solved: Commentary on Ambridge, Pine, and Lieven”, in Language, volume 90, number 3, page e92:

     The million-dollar question is what mechanisms and representations (potentially unlearned, potentially domain-specific) exist so that the learner, given the input, gradually comes to behave like an adult language user.