Meaning
Humorous expression for hallucinating from heavy drinking, especially the imagined sights of delirium tremens; 'he was seeing pink elephants' means he was very drunk or in withdrawal. By extension it is used to dismiss any wild claim as fantasy. Jocular rather than clinical, and now often applied to any absurd hallucination or illusion. Jocular and slightly dated in flavour but instantly understood; always touches on drunkenness or delusion. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The literal imagery is the drinker's hallucination. For decades before pink elephants, the standard comic idiom was 'seeing snakes' or 'seeing snakes in one's boots'; from about 1889 writers began embellishing the formula with other animals and colours. The earliest documented pink elephant traced so far is in Henry Wallace Phillips's story 'The Man and the Serpent' in Life magazine, 30 April 1896, whose drunkard sees a 'pink-and-green elephant'; an 1897 Washington Evening Times notice mentions 'the pink elephant with the orange trunk'. Jack London's autobiographical novel John Barleycorn (1913), describing drinkers who see 'blue mice and pink elephants', helped fix the formula, and pink elephants had become the leading variant by roughly 1905. Disney's Dumbo (1941), with its 'Pink Elephants on Parade' nightmare after Dumbo drinks spiked water, cemented the image for generations - so the film popularised but did not originate it.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a pink elephant (for a hallucination)
- pink elephants on parade
- seeing blue mice and pink elephants
- seeing pink elephants
Usage Examples
- By the third night without a drink he was reportedly seeing pink elephants, so the doctors called it withdrawal.
- If you believe that sales forecast, you have been seeing pink elephants.
- After the double shift and no food, one more espresso had her practically seeing pink elephants.