Tuesday, July 27, 2010

The elephant in the room

The elephant in the room is an expression for when a situation is of an obvious topic, which everyone is aware of yet, it isn’t discussed as it is seen as uncomfortable or a taboo topic.

I have been in many situations where the elephant is in the room, which I call a real awkward moment in time. This expression is of US origin where the meaning and exact word dates from the 1950’s where the first reference was seen in the Charleston Gazette in 1952.

An example of an elephant in the room is during class meetings, or group meetings were a decision is made and originally believed to be a great idea turns into a bad one yet, no one is willing to bring up the problem as they are afraid of the consequences. The consequence that someone is to blame and because they are a team, the person responsible would let down the entire team and as we all know no one likes to fail.

The elephant in the room is known as an English idiom for an obvious truth that is impossible to overlook and the people in the room pretends that it is not even there. The children in the group have chosen to concern themselves with tangible issues instead of dealing with the main one; choosing a different angle.

This can be really pointless at time as we all know when something is wrong it just takes a bit of a 'push' in the mature level to get up and speak your mind, i bet everybody is already thinking it.

1 comment:

  1. This is a long blog.i didn't get the point that you were trying to make though, it just seems like a whole lot a different definitions for one meaning. what does it mean to you?

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