# elephant in the room

Pronunciation: US say "el-uh-fuhnt in thuh ROOM" /ˌɛləfənt ɪn ðə ˈɹum/; UK/AUS say "el-i-fuhnt in thuh ROOM" /ˌɛlɪfənt ɪn ðə ˈɹuːm/

## Idiom

1. An obvious problem or difficult issue that the people involved ignore because facing it would be inconvenient or uncomfortable.
   - Simple: A big, clear problem that people ignore because talking about it would be hard or uncomfortable.
   - _The budget deficit was the elephant in the room at the council meeting, and no one dared to raise it._
   - _Before the merger talks could go anywhere, someone had to address the elephant in the room: which chief executive would stay._

## Origin

Likely of US origin, or possibly from Ivan Krylov's 1814 fable The Inquisitive Man, in which a man visiting a museum notices all sorts of things except an elephant.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/elephant-in-the-room (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).