elephant in the room

The expression “the elephant in the room” (or "the elephant in the living room") is a metaphorical idiom in English for an important or enormous topic, question, or controversial issue that is obvious or that everyone knows about but no one mentions or wants to discuss because it makes at least some of them uncomfortable and is personally, socially, or politically embarrassing, controversial, inflammatory, or dangerous. The metaphorical elephant represents an obvious problem or difficult situation that people do not want to talk about. It is based on the idea/thought that something as conspicuous as an elephant can appear to be overlooked in codified social interactions and that the sociology/psychology of repression also operates on the macro scale. Various languages around the world have words that describe similar concepts. Origins In 1814, Ivan Krylov (17691844), poet and fabulist, wrote a fable entitled "The Inquisitive Man", which tells of a man who goes to a museum and notices all sorts of tiny things, but fails to notice an elephant. The phrase became proverbial. Fyodor Dostoevsky in his novel Demons wrote, "Belinsky was just like Krylov's Inquisitive Man, who didn't notice the elephant in the museum...."