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Mad hatter sayings6/11/2023 Visit either you like: they're both mad.' ![]() 'In that direction,' the Cat said, 'lives a hatter: and in That direction, lives a March Hare. The Hatter is not actually describedĪs mad in the story - merely a participant at 'a mad tea-party' - although he can hardly be called sane, and he is portrayed as mad (along with all the other characters) by the Cheshire Cat: His 'Hatter' character from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865, is of course the best-known mad hatter of them all. Whilst not being the source of the phrase, we can't mention 'as mad as a hatter' and leave out Lewis Carroll. It's more likely that antipodean miners were called hatters because they were mad than the other way about. That's more than fifty years after the first printed and so seems unlikely to be the origin. "Miners who work alone are called 'hatters', one explanation of the term being that they frequently go mad from the solitude of their claim away in the bush, exemplifying the proverb 'As mad as a hatter'." Wakefield, in New Zealand after 50 Years: I can find no example of 'as mad as an adder' that pre-dates the above citations though.Īnother possible explanation is from New Zealand, in the name hatter that was given to miners who work alone. That corresponds with the US expression 'as mad as a cut snake'. There is also a suggestion that the phrase was originally 'as mad as an adder', that is, a viper. There's no explanation of the phrase in Haliburton's book to help us infer any sort of derivation - there's certainly no mention of poisoning or anything else to relate it to the practice of hat making. Says she, Sam, I do believe you are a born "Father he larfed out like any thing I thought he would never stop - and sister Sall got right up and walked out of the room, as mad as a hatter. Said another word, lookin' as mad as a hatter the whole He turned right round, and sat down to his map and never The expression appears again (twice) soon afterwards, in a book by the Canadian author Thomas Haliburton - The clockmaker or the sayings and doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville, 1835: TICKLER (aside to SHEPHERD.): He's raving. ![]() NORTH: Many years - I was Sultan of Bello for a long period, until dethroned by anĪct of the grossest injustice but I intend to expose the traitorous conspirators XL1V, in a fictional conversation between a group of characters that wouldn't have been out of place in Wonderland: It appears in a section of the magazine headed Noctes Ambrocianæ. The earliest known printed citation of the phrase that I know of is from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, January-June 1829. The circumstantial evidence is rather against the millinery origin though and, beyond the fact that hatters often suffered trembling fits, there's little to link hat making to the coining of 'as mad as a hatter'. That could be enough to convince us that this is the source of the phrase. ![]() The use of mercury compounds in 19th century hat making and the resulting effects are well-established - mercury poisoning is still known today as 'Mad Hatter's disease'. A neurotoxicologist correspondent informs me that "Mercury exposure can cause aggressiveness, mood swings, and anti-social behaviour.", so that derivation is certainly plausible - although there's only that circumstantial evidence to support it. Of hatters, causing them to tremble and appear insane. ![]() This was known to have affected the nervous systems Mercury used to be used in the making of hats. Mad hatters existed before Lewis Carroll put one into Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but no one is sure how this 19th century expression originated. This is now commonly understood to mean crazy, although the original meaning is unclear and may have meant annoyed. Stupidity What's the meaning of the phrase 'Mad as a hatter'?.
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