Adage Snobbery

Okay... there are a few topics that inspire true snobbery on my part and adages is one of them. There are so many to choose from and they are such a colorful depiction of a situation that using them inappropriately is like using the orange crayon to color a banana.

One of the most frequent (and annoying) infractions I hear is interchanging/misusing the two clarified below.

• elephant in the room n. A very large issue that everyone is acutely aware of, but nobody wants to talk about. Perhaps a sore spot, perhaps politically incorrect, or perhaps a political hot potato, it's something that no one wants to touch with a ten foot pole.
• 800-pound gorilla n. An overbearing entity in a specific industry or sphere of activity. A seemingly unbeatable presence always to be reckoned with; whose experience, influence, and skill threatens to defeat competitors with little effort.

Come one people... get your exotic animals and their fictional social situations straight.