Editing Elephant in the room (section)

==Origins==
In 1814, [[Ivan Krylov]] (1769{{ndash}}1844), poet and fabulist, 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.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|last1=Dostoyevsky|first1=Fyodor|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/31657709|title=Demons: a novel in three parts|date=1994|publisher=Vintage|others=trans. Pevear, Richard, 1943-, Volokhonsky, Larissa.|isbn=0-09-914001-2|location=London|pages=718 and 38, respectively|oclc=31657709}}</ref> [[Fyodor Dostoevsky]] in his novel ''[[Demons (Dostoevsky novel)|Demons]]'' wrote, "Belinsky was just like Krylov's Inquisitive Man, who didn't notice the elephant in the museum...."<ref name=":0" />

The ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'' gives the first recorded use of the phrase, as a [[simile]], in ''[[The New York Times]]'' on 20 June 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."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50073129?| title=OED, Draft Additions June 2006: elephant, n.| publisher=OUP| access-date=11 November 2008}}</ref> According to the website the Phrase Finder, the first known use in print is from 1952.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Martin|first=Gary|title='The elephant in the room' - the meaning and origin of this phrase|url=https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/elephant-in-the-room.html|access-date=22 September 2020|website=Phrasefinder|language=en}}</ref>

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 the British ''Journal of Education'' 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?"<ref>''Journal of Education''. Vol. 37 (1915), p. 288.</ref>

The first widely disseminated conceptual reference was a story written by [[Mark Twain]] in 1882, "[[The Stolen White Elephant]]", which recounts the inept, far-ranging activities of detectives trying to find an elephant that was right on the spot after all. This story, combined with Dostoyevsky's [[Ironic process theory|white bear]], may have been on [[Jerome Frank]]'s mind when he wrote in his dissent in ''United States v. Antonelli Fireworks'' (1946)<ref name="Antonelli">{{cite web |title=''United States v. Antonelli Fireworks Co.'', 155 F.2d 631 (2d Cir. 1946) |date=2 May 1946 |website=Justia |url=https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/155/631/1563658/}}</ref> and again in dissent in ''United States v. Leviton'' (1951)<ref>{{cite web |title=''United States v. Leviton et al'', 193 F.2d 848 (2d Cir. 1951) |date=30 November 1951 |website=Justia |url=https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/193/848/349489/}}</ref> of "the Mark Twain story of the little boy who was told to stand in a corner and not to think of a white elephant."

The phrase may also be a response to philosopher Alfred North Whitehead's 1929 description<ref>Process and Reality, p. 6</ref> of the validity of immediate experience: "Sometimes we see an elephant, and sometimes we do not. The result is that an elephant, when present, is noticed."

In 1935, comedian [[Jimmy Durante]] starred on Broadway in the [[Billy Rose]] Broadway musical ''[[Jumbo (musical)|Jumbo]]'', in which a police officer stops him as he leads 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]]''.