What does The tip of the iceburg mean?

Answer 1

The beginning of something much larger, which may be mostly unseen or unknown. It means there is a lot more to something than you might originally think, just as most of an iceberg lies beneath the surface of the ocean and is not able to be seen.
ice is lighter than water so it floats, but only small part is above surface.

The saying means that some much bigger problem is hidden behind what is already visible/surfaced.
Most of an iceberg is under water. What you see is the top, which is the tip of the iceberg. So there is much more of it than you can't see. So the idiom is used when there is much more to something than you already know or can see. Someone is telling you about a problem. You their problem is bad. In trying to tell you that there is much more to the problem than they have told you so far, they may say that "That is only the tip of iceberg." So the problem is far worse than you already think it is, based on what you know so far.

Answer 2

The phrase "the tip of the iceberg" is a common phrase. Only one-eighth of the iceberg is visible on top of the water. So there is danger to sailors in what is NOT visible. This term is used to imply that there is more to something that what you see.

Answer 3

When someone says that something is only the "tip of the iceberg", they mean there is much more to it than what you see at first. Like real icebergs, something like 90% of it is underwater where you can't see it. The tip of the iceberg is just what you see on the surface...there's much more to the story than that.

Answer 4

This refers to the fact that an iceberg is mostly underwater, so you only see the tip of it. It means something that is much more than what you can see or sense. An example might be a political issue where people are complaining about something little, but it's "just the tip of the iceberg" because the trouble really goes much deeper than that little part of the issue.