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"Elephant in the room" or "Elephant in the living room" is an English metaphorical idiom for an obvious truth that is either being ignored or going unaddressed. The idiomatic expression also applies to an obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss.〔Cambridge University Press. (2009). ( ''Cambridge academic content dictionary,'' p. 298. )〕 It is based on the idea that an elephant in a room would be impossible to overlook. ==Origins== In 1814, Ivan Andreevich Krylov (1769-1844), poet and fabulist, the Russian La Fontaine (whom he translated), 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.〔Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Vintage 2006, p. 718〕 Fyodor Dostoevsky in his novel 'Demons' wrote, 'Belinsky was just like Krylov's Inquisitive Man, who didn't notice the elephant in the museum....'〔Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Vintage 2006, p. 38〕 The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' gives the first recorded use of the phrase, as a simile, as ''The New York Times'' on June 20, 1959: "Financing schools has become a problem about equal to having an elephant in the living room. It's so big you just can't ignore it."〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=OED, Draft Additions June 2006: elephant, n. )〕 This idiomatic expression may have been in general use much earlier than 1959. For example, the phrase appears 44 years earlier in the pages of a British journal in 1915. The sentence was presented as a trivial illustration of a question British schoolboys would be able to answer, e.g., "Is there an elephant in the class-room?"〔__________. (1915). ''Journal of education,'' Vol. 37, p. 288.〕 The first widely disseminated conceptual reference was a story written by Mark Twain in 1882, "The Stolen White Elephant", which slyly dissects the inept, far-ranging activities of detectives trying to find an elephant that was right on the spot after all. This may have been the reference in the legal opinion of ''United States v. Leviton'', 193 F. 2d 848 (2nd Circuit, 1951), makes reference in its opinion, "As I have elsewhere observed, it is like the Mark Twain story of the little boy who was told to stand in a corner and not to think of a white elephant." A slightly different version of the phrase was used before this, with George Berkeley talking of whether or not there is "an invisible elephant in the room" in his debates with scientists.〔On the nature and elements of the external world: or Universal immaterialism fully explained and newly demonstrated by Thomas Collyns Simon, 1862, p.18〕 In 1935, comedian Jimmy Durante starred on Broadway in the Billy Rose Broadway musical ''Jumbo'', in which a police officer stops him while leading a live elephant and asks, "What are you doing with that elephant?" Durante's reply, "What elephant?" was a regular show-stopper. Durante reprises the piece in the 1962 film version of the play, ''Billy Rose's Jumbo''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「elephant in the room」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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