The elephant in the room is an obvious problem that everyone is aware of but nobody talks about. It is awkward to raise, so people pretend it is not there: debts, a conflict in the team, someone's illness. The idiom is common in conversation, at work and in the media; in an academic essay, replace it with something neutral: an issue that people avoid discussing.
When would you say the elephant in the room?
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be + the elephant in the room; address/ignore/mention + the elephant in the room
- At the meeting, the budget cuts were the elephant in the room, and nobody dared to mention them.
- Let's address the elephant in the room: we're three weeks behind schedule.
- At dinner, my parents' divorce was the elephant in the room, so we talked about the weather instead.
What changed
First versionAt the meeting, my late report was elephant in the room.
RevisionAt the meeting, my late report was the elephant in the room.
Articles are easy to leave out, but in this idiom the is compulsory: it points to the one problem that everyone present knows about. Only the was added.
The point of the idiom is not that the problem goes unnoticed. Everyone sees the elephant; they just keep quiet about it: Everyone knew about the rent increase, but nobody mentioned it. It was the elephant in the room.
Your turn
Everyone knew the project had failed, but at the meeting we discussed only small details and nobody mentioned ___.
Show the answer
the elephant in the room — Everyone knew about the failure, but they discussed small details and avoided the main issue. That is the elephant in the room. The tip of the iceberg is the small visible part of a much bigger problem, and it does not carry the idea that everyone keeps quiet.
Think of a meeting, family dinner or conversation where everyone avoided an awkward topic. Name the topic and explain why nobody talked about it.
At our team lunch, the upcoming layoffs were the elephant in the room because nobody wanted to spoil the celebration.
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