The Elephant In The Room

It’s perhaps one of our favorite phrases, but so many of us use the expressions without knowing its origins and the many times it has been referenced in the literary world. This is a problem that can no longer be ignored, much like an elephant in the room, so to speak… Here are the origins of one of our favorite phrases, and a brief history of its use.

In his 1814 fable entitled The Inquisitive Man, Ivan Krylov tells the tale of a man who goes to a museum and notices all sorts of tiny things but fails to notice an elephant. Credited with the initial concept that would spawn the term, Krylov would later be referenced by Dostoyevsky in his 1872 novel Demons, who wrote: “Belinsky was just like Krylov's Inquisitive Man, who didn't notice the elephant in the museum…”

Although The Oxford English Dictionary credits the term to a New York Times article published in 1959, evidence suggests that our modern day usage of “the elephant in the room” dates back far earlier, with allusions to the term by such notables as philosopher George Berkeley, author Mark Twain, and comedian Jimmy Durante. We may in fact never be certain of just how the term came to be, but one thing is for sure, it’ll likely continue to be used for many a year to come.

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