Street voices
Hugues
·
United States
"Addressing the elephant in the room. Something you say when you want to talk about the big important thing that just cannot be ignored, that everyone is thinking about. Man, I wanna go hang out. I wanna go out for drinks tonight. Can you call up Daniel, see if he's down? And before you say anything, let me just address the elephant in the room. I know he just lost his wife. I just wanna make sure he's doing okay, show him a good time, you know."
What it means
You say this when everyone can feel the big awkward truth stomping round the place but nobody's had the nerve to say it out loud yet. Then one person finally stops the polite little dance and names the thing that's making the whole vibe go wonky.
Usage examples
"Man, before we start pretending this barbecue is normal, let’s address the elephant in the room, your cousin set the shed on fire and nobody’s mentioned it yet."
"Halfway through the team lunch someone finally addressed the elephant in the room and asked why the whole office was being relocated next month."
"Alright, let's address the elephant in the room, Dave's been glaring at Sam all night and it's making this birthday dinner proper weird."
"Before we start chatting numbers, can we address the elephant in the room and admit the app crashed during the launch?"
"Can we just address the elephant in the room and admit nobody knows who actually invited Kyle to the wedding party chat?"
Where it comes from
This comes from the image of an elephant being so huge you couldn't possibly miss it if it was standing in the room. That idea was floating around in English by the 1800s, and by the early 1900s elephant in the room had settled in as the go-to line for an obvious problem people were avoiding.
Editors of this term
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