{
  "id": "elephant-in-the-room.silence",
  "term": "elephant in the room",
  "sense": "silence",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 18,
  "domain": "group dynamics",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "a salient difference that sits beyond the wall of the group's statement window, keeping the issue present but outside what the group will say",
  "folk_gloss": "an obvious problem that nobody talks about",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "difference.relation",
      "wall.range-end",
      "window.range",
      "collective.group",
      "statement.communication",
      "present.gift",
      "keep.maintenance"
    ],
    "interaction": "the group keeps the difference out because the wall of its statement window lies below the difference's magnitude",
    "novel_properties": [
      "unspoken salient discrepancy"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "elephant in the room"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "phrases:openai/gpt-oss-120b",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.7,
    "sources": [
      "folk phrase — what the group will not say"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-elephant-in-the-room.silence"
}