There is an elephant in the room! Have you ever heard that? Languages can be amazingly creative when it comes to visual imagery and, like a painter shaping their characters, idioms can give that extra touch of color that makes the difference.
Idioms usually come from everyday life conversations, so they can be very vivid and make use of objects or animals to relate to the meaning they want to convey. This is the case with the expression ‘the elephant in the room’. What do you think it could possibly mean? We are not talking about circus, mind you, so what other ideas come to your mind when thinking about elephants?
Well, try to picture the scene: why an elephant? Why in a room? Well, let’s see if we can spread some light on this matter.
Meaning
When somebody uses the expression ‘the elephant in the room’ they are talking about a problem that everyone knows very well but no one talks about because it is taboo, embarrassing, etc.
The elephant is used as a metaphor for a very big issue that everyone seems to know, but would rather avoid addressing because of the effects this may lead to. Talking about this topic could make somebody feel uncomfortable, or turn the heat on the political debate because of the controversies that may arise. The idea is that, even though it is impossible not to see it, something as visible as an elephant can be voluntarily and consciously ignored for the good of the people inside that room, or just for convenience.
Variants
Interestingly, there are a few variations on the same idiom. You may also come across the variant ‘the elephant in the living room’ , which used to be trendier at the beginning of the 20th century and was taken over by the simple ‘elephant in the room’ only in the 90s.
Then we have another tiny variation: ‘the pink elephant in the room’, which is apparently newer. Somehow the two variations got hybridized and we ended up with the rarest form of all: ‘the pink elephant in the living room’.
Uses and examples
This idiom is mainly used to express a social taboo. For example, it is often employed when referring to addiction recovery. Very often in fact the family and friends of an addict avoid talking about the person’s issues with drugs, alcohol, etc. in order not to upset them, but they end up amplifying the person’s denial of their addiction.
Last but not least, a similar image was used by someone very dear to us, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein: while in Cambridge, Bertrand Russell, trying to prove that the natural world can be known through observation, asked Wittgenstein to look for a rhinoceros in the room to make him admit the non-existence of the animal. Instead, Wittgenstein replied saying it is not possible to prove a negative. And who knows, maybe he also spent some time looking around the room searching for the rhino...
Example #1: Her article misses the elephant in the room, however.
Example #2: Inequality is the "elephant in the room", the unions warn.
Example #3: Of course, the elephant in the room is climate change.
Example #4: Sexism is the elephant in the room.
Need more examples? Check out on Ludwig.guru.
Origin and etymology
As we said, idioms can spread across different countries and cultures. The proof is that the first mention of an elephant in a room comes from Russia: in one of his fables, The Inquisitive Man, the author Ivan Krylov (1769–1844) mentions a man who is very attentive and notices all the little things he sees when he goes to a museum, but not the biggest item, an elephant. The phrase had a huge success and became an idiom, and was even quoted by Dostoevsky in his novel Demons. Unfortunately it's not possible to state whether the image related to the elephant was actually one of Krylov's original inventions or whether he took something which was already used by Russian people, so we can't be sure about its origins: was it the product of a single artist's imagination or a collective creation which became so popular that a writer decided to use it in one of his works?
However, the image must have been powerful enough, because in 1882 Mark Twain wrote a story called The Stolen White Elephant, about some detectives desperately trying to find an elephant without noticing it was actually there. The above graphs also show that the popularity of this idiom started peaking between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.
In 1935, the musical Jumbo had a scene where a police officer stops one of the characters as he leads an elephant and asks, ‘What are you doing with that elephant?’, and the character replies, ‘What elephant?’. The show became a film in 1962.
In 2006, the graffiti artist Banksy brought a real elephant inside the rooms where his Barely Legal exhibition was taking place in LA. The elephant was painted with the same vivid colours used for the wallpaper, making the animal even more visible but also providing an excuse for those who didn’t want to acknowledge his presence, as it could blend in with the walls. In that case, the elephant in the room (and the theme of the exhibition) was global poverty.
Ludwig’s wrap up
The idiom ‘the elephant in the room’ refers to an issue that everyone acknowledges yet nobody wants to discuss due to its inconvenience and its being regarded as taboo. The issue is perceived to be as big as an elephant, but even though it’s there and not easy to miss, nobody wants to talk first. I hope it’s not your case and you can speak freely about any matter that interests you, and above all I hope you’re not seeing elephants in your room, unless you live in Serengeti National Park. And if you actually are seeing elephants (especially pink elephants) in your room well, don’t be selfish and share some of that good stuff with us!
If you are into animal-related idioms don’t miss out why do we say: ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’.