Step 1 : Understanding the Question:
The topic of this question is English Vocabulary and Idiomatic Usage. The sentence refers to a large-scale government infrastructure project (an airport) that has been "abandoned." For a government, such a project represents a massive waste of taxpayer money and a site that is expensive to maintain without providing any public benefit. We need a word or idiom that describes this specific type of burden.
Step 2 : Key Formulas and approach:
The approach involves identifying the relationship between "cost" and "utility."
1. Define the object: High cost, low or zero utility.
2. Search for specialized idioms: Find the term that specifically describes useless and expensive possessions.
3. Eliminate non-idiomatic or irrelevant nouns.
Step 3 : Detailed Explanation:
Option (A) "white elephant" is the correct answer. This idiom is used to describe a possession that its owner cannot dispose of and whose cost, particularly that of maintenance, is out of proportion to its usefulness. It perfectly describes a failed, expensive airport project.
Option (B) "cortege" refers to a solemn funeral procession. It has no logical connection to an engineering or financial project.
Option (C) "discourse" means written or spoken communication or debate. While the government might have a discourse *about* the project, the project itself is an object, not a conversation.
Option (D) "brevity" refers to the quality of being short in duration or concise in speech. It does not fit the description of a large physical structure or a financial disaster.
Step 4 : Final Answer:
The phrase "white elephant" is the standard idiomatic term for a costly, failed project, making Option (A) the correct choice.