🐾 “the elephant in the room”

What it means: The huge obvious problem that everyone is choosing not to mention.

“The unpaid loan was the elephant in the room all through dinner.”

Where it comes from

As a metaphor about conspicuous silence it matured around the 1950s (a 1915 poem has the giant thing nobody will ride); the image of an elephant actually in a room is much older music-hall business.

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let the cat out of the baghold your horseskill two birds with one stonea fish out of watera dark horse

More phrases, including proverbs from dozens of languages, at Proverbs of the World.