Elephant in the Room

The exact origin is uncertain. An early conceptual predecessor appears in Ivan Krylov's 1814 fable "The Inquisitive Man", about someone who notices tiny museum objects but misses an elephant. Mark Twain's 1882 story "The Stolen White Elephant" featured detectives missing an obvious elephant. The phrase in its modern metaphorical sense appeared in print by 1952, with the first New York Times usage in 1959.