[Ads-l] "March Madness" "Sweet Sixteen" and the like

[Laurence Horn]

> On Apr 10, 2019, at 1:15 PM, Michael Everson <everson at EVERTYPE.COM> wrote:
> 
> Of course in “A Mad Tea-Party” the March Hare is quite mad (the Hatter is not, and he is never called *Mad Hatter either by Carroll)

It’s true that Carroll never identifies him as the *Mad* Hatter, but he (the Hatter, not Carroll) strikes me as being quite competitive in madness to the March Hare in that chapter. Gardner writes in The Annotated Alice that Tenniel, in illustrating the Mad Tea Party (https://www.nls.uk/exhibitions/treasures/alice-in-wonderland/tea-party), drew the Hatter, at Carroll’s own suggestion, “to resemble one Theophilus Carter, a furniture dealer near Oxford. Carter was known in the area as the Mad Hatter, partly because he wore a top hat…” And of course Tenniel’s Hatter wears that top hat with the large price sign, “In this style 10/6”. Tenniel also drew the Hatter as a spitten image of Bertrand Russell, who was born five years after the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but that’s another story. 

LH

> but there is also the story the Dormouse tells of the three sisters with all the alliteration of things beginning with M:
> 
> ‘They were learning to draw,’ the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; ‘and they drew all manner of things — everything that begins with an M— … such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness — you know you say things are “much of a muchness”— did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?’
> 
> Michael Everson
> 
>> On 29 Mar 2019, at 18:58, Peter Reitan <pjreitan at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
>> 
>> Last year I started a thread about this here.
>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2018-March/151255.html
>> 
>> I recently posted a piece summarizing my findings on "March Madness", "Sweet Sixteen," "Elite Eight", "Cinderella" teams and the "Big Dance."
>> https://esnpc.blogspot.com/2019/03/sweet-elite-madness-alliterative.html
>> 
>> I didn't find anything earlier than the 1927 "Sweet Sixteen" I mentioned here last year, although I did find some new, early examples from 1928, also in Indiana.
>> 
>> I didn't find anything earlier than the 1931 example of "March Madness" Barry Popik found previously.  I did, however, provide examples of earlier meanings of "March madness," including one common usage relating to bad weather.
>> 
>> The 1931 example appears to play off the weather-related usage.  Under the headline, "March Madness," it refers to a number of recent upsets in the tournament as "flurries".  It does not unambiguously refer to the tournament itself as "March madness," although the inspiration for the expression is clearly there.
>> https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/march_madness
>> 
>> I haven't seen any other examples until 1937 when it becomes common, and was used at that time in both Indiana and Michigan.  It might be older, but no examples in print other than the 1931 example.
> 
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org