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Alice in Wonderland vocabulary
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mad as a March hare
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tags: [idiom]
► definition
Definition:an English idiomatic phrase derived from the observed antics, said to occur only in the March breeding season of the European hare, Lepus europaeus. The phrase is an allusion that can be used to refer to any other animal or human who behaves in the excitable and unpredictable manner of a "March hare".A long-held view is that the hare will behave strangely and excitedly throughout its breeding season, which in Europe peaks in the month of March. This odd behaviour includes boxing at other hares, jumping vertically for seemingly no reason and generally displaying abnormal behaviour. An early verbal record of this animal's strange behaviour occurred in about 1500, in the poem Blowbol's Test where the original poet said:Thanne þey begyn to swere and to stare, And be as braynles as a Marshe haretext from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike
photo: By Jean-Jacques Boujot from Paris, France - Lièvre brun / Brown Hare, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37547558
► uses
Uses:
"I was once present at a tryal of madness, where twenty witnesses swore that the person was as mad as a March hare; and twenty others, that he was as much in his senses as any man in England.
Henry Fielding. The History of Tom Jones, Foundling
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3. Coun.
There’s a dainty mad woman, master,
Comes i’ th’ nick, as mad as a March hare.
If we can get her dance, we are made again.
I warrant her, she’ll do the rarest gambols.
William Shakespeare & John Fletcher. The Two Noble Kinsmen (1613)
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'the March Hare will be much the most interesting, and perhaps as this is May it won't be raving mad—at least not so mad as it was in March.'
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