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:
“Even the elephant carries but a small trunk on his journeys. The perfection of traveling is to travel without baggage.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What a vast fraternity it is,—that of ‘Hearts that Ache.’ For the last three months it has seemed to me as though all society were coming to me, to drop its mask for a moment and initiate me into the mystery. How we do suffer! And we go on laughing; for, as a practical joke at our expense, life is a success.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)