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The expression "the elephant in the room" (or "the elephant in the living room") is a metaphorical idiom in English for an important or enormous topic, question, or controversial issue that is obvious or that everyone knows about but no one mentions or wants to discuss because it makes at least some of them uncomfortable and is ...
If you say there is an elephant in the room, you mean that there is an obvious problem or difficult situation that people do not want to talk about. SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases. Difficult situations and unpleasant experiences. a hard/tough row to hoe idiom. abyss. adversity. at your worst idiom. Augean. bad hair day. epidemic.
: an obvious major problem or issue that people avoid discussing or acknowledging. Examples of elephant in the room in a Sentence. Recent Examples on the Web OpenAI, at last Apple waited one hour and seven minutes into its keynote address to mention the elephant in the room: generative artificial intelligence.
The first known citation that uses the phrase with the clear intention of conveying our current understanding of the phrase is the title of Typpo and Hastings’ book An elephant in the living room: a leader’s guide for helping children of alcoholics, 1984.
Meaning: If there is an elephant in the room, it means that an obvious problem is being ignored. Put another way, it is a noticeable issue that is not acknowledged or addressed. Example: Jim arrived at work and his clothes were soaking wet!
The expression “elephant in the room”, sometimes also “elephant in the living room”, means “a big issue everyone is aware of, but which is being ignored, because everybody finds discussion about it uncomfortable”.
The idiom ‘elephant in the room’ is a vivid expression used to highlight an obvious and significant issue or problem that everyone is deliberately ignoring or avoiding. When there’s an ‘elephant in the room,’ it implies the existence of a large, noticeable concern that is being overlooked, often due to discomfort, fear, or a ...
