On WBST, the local NPR station, there was a promo for a story about Indiana’s latest adventure in Gerrymandering. A voice said, “Everybody knows it, but nobody wants to talk about it. It’s the elf in the room.” The guy surely meant “elephant,” but his mouth got in a hurry.
I thought, “Hey, thls could be the start of a new idiom, the elf in the room.” Especially in this time of abbreviated txt-spk. Who’s got time to thumb-type elephant?
That one has legs. That’s a good idea. I’m stealing it.
The next time I’m trapped in one of those tedious and soporific meetings on office procedural demarcations, rather than trying to remember how to pronounce Batrachomyomachia, I will be able to use “That’s the elf in the room”.
A recall a comment where a Mother tells her children the Elf on the Shelf is watching them. Later, one kid asks his Sister, “What is that?”
She responds, “An elf in the fireplace”.
I just e-mailed Public Radio’s A Way With Words show about The Elf In The Room. I said, “How many instagramming teens even know the old elephant phrase, anyway?”