An elephant joke is a joke, almost always an absurd riddle or conundrum and often a sequence of such, that involves an elephant. Elephant jokes were a fad in the 1960s, with many people constructing large numbers of them according to a set formula. Sometimes they involve parodies or puns.
Four examples of elephant jokes are:
- Q: Why did the elephant paint its fingernails red?
- A: So it could hide in the strawberry patch.
- Q: How can you tell that an elephant is in the bathtub with you?
- A: By the smell of peanuts on its breath.
- Q: How can you tell that an elephant has been in your refrigerator/ice box?
- A: By the footprints in the butter/cheesecake/cream cheese.
- and
- Q: What time is it when an elephant sits on your fence?
- A: Time to build a new fence.
Read more about Elephant Joke: History, Structure, Symbolism
Famous quotes containing the words elephant and/or joke:
“to his eyes, Funnyface Or Elephant as yet
Mean nothing. His distinction between Me and Us
Is a matter of taste; his seasons are Dry and Wet;
He thinks as his mouth does.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“Postmodernism is among other things a sick joke at the expense of ... revolutionary avant-gardism.”
—Terry Eagleton (b. 1943)