The recipient of this vengeful act of royal generosity was thus confronted with the high costs of looking after the white elephant, and as often as not went broke as a result.
For it's a term of esteem and appreciation, and this helps explain why in 1861, an earlier Thai monarch established the Most Exalted Order of the White Elephant, consisting of six separate grades, which soon became the most frequently-awarded honour in the country, as it remains to this day.
In some ways, then, the expression "white elephant" carries with it in Thailand a very different meaning from that which we associate with it in the West.
Add in the likelihood that the rate cap leads to escalating subsidies, and no wonder that some Brazilians wonder whether an all-too familiar species has re-emerged in the Amazon: a white elephant.
Before those two series comes international cricket's great white elephant, the Champions Trophy, which is due to be phased out after 2013.
But when the criminals and leaders are white men, race and gender become the elephant in the room.
He began to write a novel, set during Brazil's hosting of the World Cup in 2014, in which public money was yet again disappearing into private pockets, and white-elephant stadiums were rising across the land.
The plan initially is to import elephant, white rhino, warthog, giraffe, zebra, wildebeest and a range of antelope.
The naysayers insist that the tunnel will be an ugly, expensive white elephant.
Big and dark and looking slightly weary, his white tusks flashing in the sun, the elephant walked towards our table with a steady gait, moving with a dogged, fatigued determination.
Much, then, is riding on the success of a plane that Boeing dismisses as a white elephant.
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The escalator, originally built to ease traffic on the narrow street, was initially criticized by the city's director of audit as a costly "white elephant" because it overshot its budget by 153% and failed to reduce traffic.
There will be endless promises to ensure that there is a positive legacy of London 2012, that we are more sporting as a nation, more inclusive and that the Olympic Park revives east London and does not become a white elephant.
Derek Granger, of the Kemptown Society, said he feared it would be "another white elephant" for Brighton.
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Hence, in turn, our own notion that a white elephant is a valuable possession which cannot be disposed of, even though the expense of maintaining it is out of all proportion to its usefulness or worth.
Enough of a common mind-set remains that when Rudolph Giuliani (another pro-choice Catholic politician) last year denounced a painting of the Virgin incorporating elephant dung, his approval rating jumped from 60% to 80% among white Catholics.
They point out the "ghost town" of Kilamba in Angola, a grandiose project often labeled as a white elephant.
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