Old English rūm, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch ruim, German Raum.

• In Old English room meant ‘the amount of space occupied by something’, and did not mean ‘an interior division of a building’ until the 14th century. The majority of houses then would have had only one room. Sometimes political negotiation is described as having taken place in a smoke-filled room, meaning that it has been conducted privately rather than more openly. The expression comes from a 1920s news report about the selection of the Republican presidential candidate, Warren Harding, who in 1921 became the 29th president of the United States. According to the report he was ‘chosen by a group of men in a smoke-filled room’. Harding was at the time something of a dark horse, and a lack of openness and democracy was associated with his selection. Room at the top is a way of describing the opportunity to join the higher ranks of an organization. The phrase is attributed to the American politician Daniel Webster (1782–1852), who was warned against attempting to enter the overcrowded legal profession. He is said to have replied, ‘There is always room at the top.’ The phrase was taken up in the early 20th century and was used as the title of John Braine's first novel, published in 1957, about an ambitious young man in an industrial town in the north of England which was filmed in 1959. An elephant in the room is an obvious, major problem or controversial issue that is being studiously avoided as a subject for discussion. The phrase was originally American, and seems to have been first used in the early 1980s, in the language of therapists treating people addicted to drink or drugs. An alternative is a moose on the table. See also cat