![needle in a haystack needle in a haystack](https://www.tekportal.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/needle-in-a-haystack.jpg)
An item that is very hard or impossible to locate, as in Looking for that screw in Dean’s workshop amounts to looking for a needle in a haystack. Originating in the early 1500s, with meadow instead of haystack, this metaphor exists in many other languages as well.