Elephant in the room - wikipedia Elephant in the room For other uses, see Elephant in the room ( disambiguation ). The Elephant in the Room, Banksy exhibition, 2006 Barely Legal show, Los Angeles ( The elephant is Tai ) Elephant in the room is an English - language metaphorical idiom for an obvious problem or risk that no one wants to discuss. It is based on the idea / thought that something as conspicuous as an elephant can appear to be overlooked in codified social interactions, and that the sociology / psychology of repression also operates on the macro scale. Contents 1 Origins 2 Usage 2.1 Similar 3 See also 4 Notes 5 References 6 External links Origins In 1814, Ivan Andreevich Krylov ( 1769 -- 1844 ), poet and fabulist, wrote a fable entitled `` The Inquisitive Man '' which tells of a man who goes to a museum and notices all sorts of tiny things, but fails to notice an elephant. The phrase became proverbial. Fyodor Dostoevsky in his novel ' Demons ' wrote, ' Belinsky was just like Krylov 's Inquisitive Man, who did n't notice the elephant in the museum... ' The Oxford English Dictionary gives the first recorded use of the phrase, as a simile, in The New York Times on June 20, 1959 : `` Financing schools has become a problem about equal to having an elephant in the living room. It 's so big you just ca n't ignore it. '' This idiomatic expression may have been in general use much earlier than 1959. For example, the phrase appears 44 years earlier in the pages of a British journal, Journal of Education, in 1915. The sentence was presented as a trivial illustration of a question British schoolboys would be able to answer, e.g., `` Is there an elephant in the class - room ? '' The first widely disseminated conceptual reference was a story written by Mark Twain in 1882, `` The Stolen White Elephant '', which slyly dissects the inept, far - ranging activities of detectives trying to find an elephant that was right on the spot after all. This may have been the reference in the legal opinion of United States v. Leviton, 193 F. 2d 848 ( 2nd Circuit, 1951 ), makes reference in its opinion, `` As I have elsewhere observed, it is like the Mark Twain story of the little boy who was told to stand in a corner and not to think of a white elephant. '' A slightly different version of the phrase was used before this, with George Berkeley talking of whether or not there is `` an invisible elephant in the room '' in his debates with scientists. In 1935, comedian Jimmy Durante starred on Broadway in the Billy Rose Broadway musical Jumbo, in which a police officer stops him while leading a live elephant and asks, `` What are you doing with that elephant ? '' Durante 's reply, `` What elephant ? '' was a regular show - stopper. Durante reprises the piece in the 1962 film version of the play, Billy Rose 's Jumbo. Usage The term refers to a question, problem, solution, or controversial issue which is obvious to everyone who knows about the situation, but which is deliberately ignored because to do otherwise would cause great embarrassment, sadness, or trigger arguments or is simply taboo. The idiom can imply a value judgment that the issue ought to be discussed openly, or it can simply be an acknowledgment that the issue is there and not going to go away by itself. The term is often used to describe an issue that involves a social taboo, such as race, religion, homosexuality, mental illness, or even suicide. It is applicable when a subject is emotionally charged ; and the people who might have spoken up decide that it is probably best avoided. The idiom is commonly used in addiction recovery terminology to describe the reluctance of friends and family of an addicted person to discuss the person 's problem, thus aiding the person 's denial. Especially in reference to alcohol abuse, the idiom is sometimes coupled with that of the pink elephant, q.v. `` the pink elephant in the room. '' The expression has also been used as a metaphorical idiom in Spanish. In 1994, the 8000 Process was a legal investigation of events surrounding accusations that the campaign of Colombian Liberal Party candidate Ernesto Samper for President of Colombia was partially funded with drug money from the Cali Cartel. Insisting on his innocence, Samper stated that if drug money had entered the presidential campaign, it had done so `` behind his back ''. Cardinal Pedro Rubiano, a leader of Colombia 's Catholic Church, stated in an interview that not knowing that drug money financed part of the presidential campaign was similar to not noticing `` an elephant entering one 's living room ''. Since then, the events that led to drug money financing the `` Samper for President '' campaign have been referred to as `` The Elephant ''. For some, their first encounter with this phrase comes through the poem of the same name by Terry Kettering. In one edition of Time magazine in 2013, Chris Christie was labeled as the `` Elephant in the Room '' on the cover page. Similar A variation is the phrase `` elephant in the corner '' which is infrequently used to the same effect. Logician and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein used an example of a rhinoceros in the room to show the impossibility of proving negative existential statements. `` Mokita '' is a word in the Kilivila language, which is spoken on Kiriwina, the largest of the Trobriand Islands ( near Papua New Guinea ). It means `` truth we all know but agree not to talk about. '' See also Blind men and an elephant Elephant joke Elephant test Nigger in the woodpile Ostrich effect Polite fiction Skeleton in the closet ( idiom ) Taboo The Elephant in the Living Room, 2011 documentary The Emperor 's New Clothes Third rail ( metaphor ) Unsaid Notes Jump up ^ Wyatt, Edward. A Splashy Los Angeles Debut by Banksy - Design - New York Times, Published : September 16, 2006, retrieved December 2012 Jump up ^ Cambridge University Press. ( 2009 ). Cambridge academic content dictionary, p. 298. Jump up ^ Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Vintage 2006, p. 718 Jump up ^ Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Vintage 2006, p. 38 Jump up ^ `` OED, Draft Additions June 2006 : elephant, n ''. OUP. Retrieved 2008 - 11 - 11. Jump up ^ Journal of education, Vol. 37 ( 1915 ), p. 288. Jump up ^ On the nature and elements of the external world : or Universal immaterialism fully explained and newly demonstrated by Thomas Collyns Simon, 1862, p. 18 Jump up ^ Palta, Namrata. ( 2007 ). Spoken English : a Detailed and Simplified Course for Learning Spoken English, p. 95. Jump up ^ Canal RCN - Noticias RCN Archived 2007 - 09 - 28 at the Wayback Machine. Jump up ^ Articulo Archivado FRASES DEL AÑO Jump up ^ Mauk, Kristen L. ( 2006 ). Gerontological Nursing : Competencies for Care, p. 808., p. 808, at Google Books ; `` The Elephant in the Room, '' CHUMS Magazine, p. 23. May 2003. Jump up ^ `` ' Elephant in the corner of the living room ' : Discrimination common, associated with depression among minority children, '' AAPNews ( American Academy of Pediatrics ). May 8, 2010 ; O'Connor, P. ( 2008 ) `` The Elephant in the Corner : Gender and Policies Related to Higher Education, '' Administration ( Institute of Public Administration of Ireland ) 56 ( 1 ), pp. 85 - 110. Jump up ^ MacDonald, JF ( 1993 ) `` Russel, Wittgenstein and the problem of the rhinoceros '' Southern Journal of Philosophy 31 ( 4 ) 409 - 24. Jump up ^ Senft, Gunter ( 1995 ). `` Ai n't Misbehavin ' ? Trobriand Pragmatics and the Field Researcher 's Opportunity to Put His ( Or Her ) Foot in It ''. Oceanic Linguistics. University of Hawai'i Press. 34 ( 1 ) : 211 -- 226. doi : 10.2307 / 3623120. JSTOR 3623120. References Cambridge University Press. ( 2009 ). Cambridge academic content dictionary ( Paul Heacock, editor ). New York : Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978 - 0 - 521 - 87143 - 3 / ISBN 978 - 0 - 521 - 69196 - 3 ; OCLC 183392531 __________. ( 1915 ). Journal of education, Vol. 37. Oxford : Oxford University Press. OCLC 1713625 Palta, Namrata. ( 2007 ). Spoken English : a Detailed and Simplified Course for Learning Spoken English. New Delhi : Lotus Press. ISBN 978 - 8 - 183 - 82052 - 3 ; OCLC 297508439 External links Look up elephant in the room in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Wikiquote has quotations related to : Elephant in the room Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary ( OALD ), Word of the Month : Elephant in the room Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elephant_in_the_room&oldid=842789562 '' Categories : English - language idioms Metaphors referring to elephants Metaphors referring to animals Political correctness Hidden categories : Webarchive template wayback links All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from September 2016 Talk Contents About Wikipedia Català Deutsch Español فارسی Italiano Norsk Svenska 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 24 May 2018, at 17 : 39. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia ® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. About Wikipedia

Question: what does it mean when someone says the elephant in the room
Answer: an obvious problem or risk that no one wants to discuss