The term may come from an Indian fable involving three blind men (or men in the dark) that happen upon a very large object (an elephant). Perplexed as to what the object is, the men attempt to describe, individually, what they think it is, and each man produces a different answer (a rope, a tree trunk, and a fire hose). The men then argue about what the whole object actually is without knowing that, in actuality, each man identified only a portion of the whole (respectively, the tail, leg, and trunk of the elephant) and not one of them is correct.
The story is often used to show that no one person has a wholly "correct" view of any one subject.
The term is often used in legal cases when there is an issue which may be open to interpretation,[2][3] such as in the case of Cadogan Estates Ltd v Morris, when Lord Justice Stuart-Smith referred to "the well known elephant test. It is difficult to describe, but you know it when you see it".[4]
