pink elephants
1
9.9
- noun
- Informal
:
elefantes rosas
- lf you don't quit drinking that brandy, you'll be seeing pink elephants.
There could be a giant pink elephant and a gorilla, you know, juggling, you know, fireballs.
- There could be a giant pink elephant and a gorilla, you know, juggling, you know, fireballs.
Examples
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After several drinks, he started to see pink elephants dancing around him.
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There could be a giant pink elephant and a gorilla, you know, juggling, you know, fireballs.
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You'll see pink elephants.
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When she's drunk, she often talks about pink elephants from her childhood.
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After the party, he jokingly said he might see pink elephants if he continued drinking.
Synonyms
140
7.5
A false experience in which you see or hear something not there
1
7.9
Seeing things that are not really there because the brain sends wrong signals
Seeing animals that are not really there
Ghostly images that appear in dreams or in the mind
Surface Forms
Morphology
Although the constituents 'pink' and 'elephant' create a vivid literal image, the specific meaning 'hallucinations from heavy drinking' is a culturally specific idiom that cannot be reliably derived from the words alone. A B1 learner who knows both words would likely interpret it literally or as 'imaginary pink elephants' but would not predict the conventionalized sense of drunken hallucinations without prior exposure.
Etymology
The phrase pink elephants comes from a strong image: very drunk people imagined bright pink elephants that could not be real. One popular story says writers and cartoons used that picture to show 'imaginary things' after too much drinking, so today the phrase means 'seeing things' when someone is very drunk.