The curious origins of the 'white elephant’

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Transcript

00:00Have you ever heard someone calling something a white elephant when talking about a useless but

00:04expensive thing? This face actually comes from Siam, now Thailand. A long time ago white elephants

00:11were seen as very special and even secret. Only the king could own them and they had to be treated

00:16with great care. But there was a problem as white elephants were very expensive to keep and they

00:21couldn't be used for work like regular elephants. There is a legend that Siamese king would sometimes

00:27give a white elephant as a gift to someone they didn't like. The person couldn't refuse it but

00:32taking care of the elephant would cost them so much money that it could ruin them. By the 18th

00:37centuries English speakers started using white elephant to describe anything that is fancy and

00:42costly but not very useful. Today people use this face for things like expensive projects that don't

00:48work out. So the next time you hear someone say white elephant it means something that looks

00:53valuable but ends up being more trouble than it's worth.