Now, the VOA Special English program "Words and Their Stories".
Every people has its own way of saying things, its own special expressions. Today, Maurice Joyce tells about the American expression: mad as a...
The word "mad" is used in many ways. A mad person can be an insane person, or someone who is foolish, or someone who has lost touch with reality. It also can be someone who is angry.
Many expressions use the word "mad". One is mad as a hatter(疯疯癫癫). Another is mad as a March hare. Both these expressions are based on the same children's book, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The book was first published in eighteen sixty-five. It is still popular.
The story is about Alice, a girl who falls through a hole in the ground into a very unusual place. Alice meets strange people and animals including a disappearing cat. The cat tells Alice in that direction lives a hatter and in that direction lives a March hare. Visit either you would like. They both are mad.
Alice has tea with the hatter and the March hare. It is the strangest tea party you could imagine. Alice decides that the cat was right. Both the hatter and the March hare are mad.
Alice in Wonderland is a make-believe story. But some of it was based on fact. Hatters, people who made hats, often were mad. They used the element mercury in making and shaping hats. After years of working with mercury, many hat makers suffered from mercury poisoning. They lost control of their muscles. And many became insane. So there was a reason for the expression "mad as a hatter".
What about the March hare? Well, mad as a March hare is even easier to explain. Lewis Carroll used a well-known fact of nature. In the spring, usually, in the month of March, hares or rabbits appear to go insane. They can be seen in fields hitting the ground with their back legs, jumping up and down, throwing their bodies in circles in the air. The hares appear to be insane. But they are only doing what comes naturally. That time of year is their mating season. So, the hare is not mad all the time just in the month of March.
This Special English program was written by Marilyn Christiano. Maurice Joyce was the announcer. I'm Shirley Griffith. Listen again next week for another Words and Their Stories program on the Voice of America.
