White Elephant
Whether you're a student of etymology or you don't even know what that word means, tell us how you think this animal expression originated. We'll post the most accurate as well as the most inventive. Email your answer to when_pigs@discovery.com.
Before they settled on building the Trojan horse, they thought about building the white elephant. It would have been an enormously more expensive undertaking to create, so they settled on the horse instead.
—C Ke
Misnomer: Originally it was wide elephant. A wide elephant didn't fit on the paths, so nobody really wanted it!
—blake.jarvis
P.T. Barnum heard of a white elephant in India. He sent someone to buy it for him sight unseen. However, when he got it, the elephant was really not white and was covered with pink splotches. The paying public was not impressed. He ended up having this elephant that he couldn't put on display, but that was too valuable to him to get rid of. So, the phrase white elephant came to mean something that was generally useless, but that was too valuable to the owner to throw away.
—renia_01
This term was originally used by the press in reference to a talent-laden New York Yankees team whose uniforms featured a white elephant.
—tom_aquino
A story about the king of Siam who owned rare white elephants because they were too special to be owned by anyone else. It was against the law to work, beat or neglect a rare white elephant. The king soon realized that they were only a burden since they could not work for their keep. He started giving a white elephant to visitors he did not like. Knowing they could do nothing but feed the huge beast they would eventually come to financial ruin. Therefore, the white elephant has since meant anything someone was burdened with and couldn't get rid of.
—prussel1
