elephant in the room
elephant in the room noun: a problem or difficult issue that is very obvious, but is ignored for the convenience or comfort of those involved.
Noun
elephant in the room (plural elephants in the room)
- 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.2008 January 6, Nicholas Rufford, “Motormouth: The car of the future, at £1,300”, in Sunday Times (UK), archived from the original on 05 Oct 2025
elephant in the room meaning in Hindi, Indonesian and Thai
elephant in the room in Hindi
- problem that is obvious but ignored
- कमरे में हाथी kamre mẽ hāthī
elephant in the room in Indonesian
- problem that is obvious but ignored
- gajah dalam ruangan
elephant in the room in Thai
- problem that is obvious but ignored
- ช้างในห้อง cháang-nai-hɔ̂ng
Synonyms of elephant in the room
Forms of elephant in the room
| plural | elephants in the room |
|---|
Origin of elephant in the room
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.
Words formed from elephant in the room
Questions about elephant in the room
- What does elephant in the room mean?
- Elephant in the room means a problem or difficult issue that is very obvious, but is ignored for the convenience or comfort of those involved.
- What is elephant in the room in Hindi?
- Elephant in the room in Hindi is कमरे में हाथी (kamre mẽ hāthī). See Elephant in the room meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is elephant in the room?
- Elephant in the room is a noun.
- What is the plural of elephant in the room?
- The plural of elephant in the room is elephants in the room.
Words near elephant in the room in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: elephant in the room (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-elephant in the room.ogg.
Cite this entry: “elephant in the room.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/elephant_in_the_room. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.