Meaning
A major, obvious problem that everyone present is aware of but deliberately avoids mentioning because doing so would be embarrassing or uncomfortable. Usually framed as 'the elephant in the room' or 'an elephant in the room'. Informal but widely used in journalism and business; always implies awkward avoidance. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The idiom is American and its precise source is unknown. The Phrase Finder traces the earliest known print appearance to a July 1952 joke in the Charleston Gazette ('get that elephant out of your room'), though its intent is unclear. The OED, as summarized by Wikipedia, records a 1959 New York Times use of the simile ('financing schools has become a problem about equal to having an elephant in the living room'). Earlier conceptual ancestors exist, such as Krylov's 1814 fable of a man who fails to notice an elephant and Mark Twain's 1882 story 'The Stolen White Elephant', but these are not uses of the idiom itself. The modern fixed form was consolidated in the 1980s, notably in Typpo and Hastings' 1984 book An Elephant in the Living Room and Bernard MacLaverty's description of the Northern Ireland conflict as 'the elephant in our living room' (1989).
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- 800-pound gorilla in the room
- address the elephant in the room
- elephant in the living room
- the elephant in the room
Usage Examples
- Nobody mentioned the layoffs at dinner; they were the elephant in the room all evening.
- The report finally addresses the elephant in the room: the division has not turned a profit in years.
- Instead of discussing the merger rumours, the board talked about parking, skirting the elephant in the room.