white rabbit
1
9.1
- noun
- /waɪt ˈræbɪt/
- Literature
:
conejo blanco
- Don't be such a white rabbit and hurry up!
Examples
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He rushed into the meeting like a white rabbit, apologizing for his tardiness.
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The novel uses the white rabbit as a metaphor for stepping into new and uncertain experiences.
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She joked that she was the family's white rabbit, always lagging behind on their outings.
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My friend is always a white rabbit when we meet.
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She always arrives late to our meetings, like a white rabbit rushing in at the last moment.
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Whenever he starts a new project, I can hear him say he's been inspired by the white rabbit from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
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Don't be a white rabbit when it comes to deadlines; it's better to be on time than always running late.
Surface Forms
Morphology
white + rabbit
The senses given (a person who is always late; a symbol from Lewis Carroll) depend on a cultural/literary reference to the White Rabbit rather than a compositional meaning of 'white' + 'rabbit'. A B1 learner who knows the constituent words would most likely interpret it literally as a pale-colored animal and would not derive the idiomatic senses without prior exposure, so the phrase is opaque.
Etymology
White rabbit comes from Lewis Carroll's book 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland', where a white rabbit hurries past with a pocket watch, crying 'I'm late!' and leads Alice down a rabbit hole. Because the rabbit was always rushing, 'white rabbit' can mean 'a person who is often late', and because it led Alice into the unknown, it can also mean 'something or someone that starts an unexpected adventure'.