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elephant in the room

noun

Etymology

Likely US origin, or possibly from Ivan Andreyevich Krylov's 1814 fable, The Inquisitive Man, which tells of a man going to a museum and noticing all sorts of things apart from an elephant.

Definitions

  1. A problem or difficult issue that is very obvious, but is ignored for the convenience or…

    A problem or difficult issue that is very obvious, but is ignored for the convenience or comfort of those involved.

    • Near-synonyms: 800-pound gorilla, gorilla in the room, 800-pound gorilla in the room
    • There is an elephant in the room that nearly every politician and green campaigner is ignoring. It’s called population growth.
    • While the Swiss bank remained positive on the sector through 2022, the coronavirus situation remained “the elephant in the room,” he added.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for elephant in the room. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA