strike » stripe

Chiefly in:   stripe me pink

Classification: English – idiom-related

Spotted in the wild:

  • Then they investigated my systems disk on their checker, SAM. And stripe me pink, SAM told them that the Utilities 2 disk had also been infected by the Scores virus. (MUESLI News, Mar. 1990)
  • Well, stripe me pink and call me a llama - is this plastic pop at its most plasticy? (MVC user review, June 28, 2001)
  • Aussie slang is so infectious. … Stripe me pink! (i swear!) (BootsnAll Travel Community, Nov. 4, 2004)
  • stripe me pink! - expression of surprise, amazement, wonder. (JoyZine: Australia Decoded)

Analyzed or reported by:

_Strike me pink_ is primarily a UK/Australian exclamation of surprise (OED has citations back to 1902). Some examples of _stripe me pink_ are evidently based on mishearings by English speakers from elsewhere in the world (e.g., the US) unfamiliar with the original expression. It also appears frequently as a deliberate pun.

| link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/07/15 |

Commentaries

  1. 1

    Commentary by Twoddle , 2005/08/11 at 6:49 pm

    “Stripe me pink” reminds me of one of the many quaint phrases my grandmother (from the East End of London used to employ: “Gor tunner me pink”. Presumably it meant “God turn me pink”, but the reference to pink makes no more obvious sense in that phrase than it does in the striped variety.

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