Ewa Homrich: I will make this as simple as possible. Often times the part of the iceberg you see above water is only a small amount of the whole iceberg. There is a large amount of it underwater. "The tip of the iceberg" is just referring to the part you can see, which is just a small amount of the whole thing. "The most widepread of the ethnic cuisines are probably Chinese, Italian, and Mexican. But that is just the tip of the iceberg."Chinese, Italian, and Mexican are just the ones that are most common. But when you look more, you find a lot more types of food....Show more
Tijuana Tatsak: most of the iceberg (underwater) is invisible, so when you only see the tip, you are NOT seeing most of it.
Ardath Templer: Seventy five percent of an iceberg is........... the tip is .......
Reyes Brunell: Fig. only the part of something that can be easily observed, but not the rest of it, which is hidden. (Referring to the fact that the majority of an iceberg is bel! ow the surface of the water.)So basically its saying that these ethnic groups are the majority but there are a lot more that havent been mentioned yet.
Jasper Mangel: Tip of the iceberg has two main uses, both of which mean about the same thing. The basic idea is that an iceberg only shows 10% of its volume above water, which is the "tip" of the idiom. Most of the iceberg is not visible.So, "tip of the iceberg" can mean "a sign that there is a lot more that we don't know yet". This meaning is often used with respect to people or events, where a small bad thing is seen, and this makes a person wonder what else bad is hidden from us for the moment (but we will find once we start looking).A second use is the one that you ask about. In this case, it is used to mean that "what I have told you is only a small part of a huge list of things".You can see that both meanings have the same sense, that there is way more to the subject than has been mentioned or seen....Show mo! re
