"gorilla in the room" meaning in English

See gorilla in the room in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-us-gorilla in the room.oga [US] Forms: gorillas in the room [plural]
Etymology: Blend of 800-pound gorilla + elephant in the room Etymology templates: {{blend|en|800-pound gorilla|elephant in the room}} Blend of 800-pound gorilla + elephant in the room Head templates: {{en-noun|gorillas in the room}} gorilla in the room (plural gorillas in the room)
  1. (idiomatic) A problem or difficult issue that is very obvious, but is ignored for the convenience or comfort of those involved. Tags: idiomatic Related terms: elephant in the room
    Sense id: en-gorilla_in_the_room-en-noun-cZ18lNoC Categories (other): English blends, English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for gorilla in the room meaning in English (1.7kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "800-pound gorilla",
        "3": "elephant in the room"
      },
      "expansion": "Blend of 800-pound gorilla + elephant in the room",
      "name": "blend"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Blend of 800-pound gorilla + elephant in the room",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "gorillas in the room",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "gorillas in the room"
      },
      "expansion": "gorilla in the room (plural gorillas in the room)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English blends",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A problem or difficult issue that is very obvious, but is ignored for the convenience or comfort of those involved."
      ],
      "id": "en-gorilla_in_the_room-en-noun-cZ18lNoC",
      "links": [
        [
          "problem",
          "problem"
        ],
        [
          "difficult",
          "difficult"
        ],
        [
          "issue",
          "issue"
        ],
        [
          "obvious",
          "obvious"
        ],
        [
          "ignore",
          "ignore"
        ],
        [
          "convenience",
          "convenience"
        ],
        [
          "comfort",
          "comfort"
        ],
        [
          "involve",
          "involve"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A problem or difficult issue that is very obvious, but is ignored for the convenience or comfort of those involved."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "elephant in the room"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-us-gorilla in the room.oga",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/08/En-us-gorilla_in_the_room.oga/En-us-gorilla_in_the_room.oga.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/En-us-gorilla_in_the_room.oga",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (US)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "gorilla in the room"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "800-pound gorilla",
        "3": "elephant in the room"
      },
      "expansion": "Blend of 800-pound gorilla + elephant in the room",
      "name": "blend"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Blend of 800-pound gorilla + elephant in the room",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "gorillas in the room",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "gorillas in the room"
      },
      "expansion": "gorilla in the room (plural gorillas in the room)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "elephant in the room"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English blends",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with audio links"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A problem or difficult issue that is very obvious, but is ignored for the convenience or comfort of those involved."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "problem",
          "problem"
        ],
        [
          "difficult",
          "difficult"
        ],
        [
          "issue",
          "issue"
        ],
        [
          "obvious",
          "obvious"
        ],
        [
          "ignore",
          "ignore"
        ],
        [
          "convenience",
          "convenience"
        ],
        [
          "comfort",
          "comfort"
        ],
        [
          "involve",
          "involve"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A problem or difficult issue that is very obvious, but is ignored for the convenience or comfort of those involved."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-us-gorilla in the room.oga",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/08/En-us-gorilla_in_the_room.oga/En-us-gorilla_in_the_room.oga.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/En-us-gorilla_in_the_room.oga",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (US)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "gorilla in the room"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-16 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (e268c0e and 304864d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.