gorilla in the room
1
6.6
- idiom
- Informal
:
el elefante en la habitación
- We need to acknowledge the gorilla in the room: our team's communication problems are affecting our project.
- the 800-pound gorilla in the room
Examples
-
Understandably, no one wants to talk about this, but it really is the 10,000-pound gorilla in the room.
Blog text (6) -
No one wants to discuss the gorilla in the room, which is the lack of funding for education.
-
The big gorilla in the room is not who you think it is.
Blog text (34) -
This is the 800-pound gorilla in the room.
Blog text (4) -
But they realize they have to play ball with him because he is the 800 lb gorilla in the room.
Blog text (22) -
The 800-pound gorilla in the room sits wherever he wants, I guess.
Blog text (12) -
That sounds so silly, but the cancer is like the 800-lb. gorilla in the room, even between friends as close as Dee and me.
Blog text (11) -
Where the heck has this money gone for the last 20 years is the 400 lb gorilla in the room.
Blog text (10) -
It's becoming the 800-lb gorilla in the room, overshadowing the overall narrative of the season, which I doubt is really what they wanted.
Blog text (27) -
The gorilla in the room is the company's declining profits, yet everyone keeps talking about minor issues.
Synonyms
23
4.5
An obvious problem that people avoid talking about
7
5.6
A difficult issue people try to avoid or pass to others
A person or problem everyone knows but ignores, causing repeated trouble
Antonyms
How Obvious
- Informal
1
6.6
- Informal
23
4.5
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'an obvious problem everyone ignores' is a figurative idiom and cannot be reliably deduced from the literal parts 'gorilla', 'in', 'the', 'room' — a B1 learner would most likely picture a physical animal in a space rather than infer the social/metaphorical sense. Although a related metaphor ('elephant in the room') exists cross-linguistically, understanding this non-literal mapping requires prior idiomatic exposure rather than simple composition of known words.
Etymology
Gorilla in the room comes from the image of a large gorilla sitting in a small room that everyone sees but pretends not to notice. That clear, strange sight shows why the phrase means 'an obvious problem everyone ignores'.