Meaning
American informal term for a notice of dismissal from a job: to get, receive or be handed a pink slip is to be fired or laid off, the slip historically tucked into the pay envelope. Also used as a verb, to pink-slip someone. Not used this way in British English (P45, the sack); in Australia and elsewhere a pink slip is a vehicle document instead. Informal American workplace idiom; tone ranges from matter-of-fact to grimly jokey. Regional use: American English.
Origin
Reference works date the noun to about 1910-15: Random House editors traced it to at least 1910, as reported in a 1991 New York Times piece. The stock explanation is physical - Collins, citing Webster's New World dictionaries, says dismissal notices were sometimes printed on pink paper, with the employee's carbon copy of a triplicate form often pink - and the verb followed by the 1950s. But the exact mechanism is unproven: Wikipedia reports rival stories that the phrase began as the pink cancellation slips issued by vaudeville's United Booking Office (founded 1906) or as the pink sheet of triplicate forms, both offered only tentatively. The Depression fixed the image of workers waiting for the pink slip.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- get the pink slip
- hand someone a pink slip
- pink slips
- pink-slipped
Usage Examples
- Half the drafting department got pink slips the week before Christmas.
- One more missed deadline and you will be looking at a pink slip.
- The studio pink-slipped most of its temporary writers after the merger.