PHRASES: We’re continuing a look at some phrases in the English language that have lost context over time, and seem pretty confusing.

For example, “mad as a March hare.” It means “not sane.”

According to the website babbel, “Lewis Carroll played around with a lot of English idioms in his Alice in Wonderland series. He would base characters on these English phrases that don’t make sense because he thought it was funny. The phrase ‘to grin like a Cheshire cat,’ for example, inspired the ethereal cat that’s always smiling in his books. Ironically, Lewis Carroll’s books became so popular that the phrases he skewered are mainly remembered because he used them. Their origins are often lost.”

Here the issue is the March hare. Rearranging the phrase to “mad as a hare in March” makes more sense, as March is the frenzied breeding season of the hare, which might lead to one thinking it “mad.”

What about the “dog days of summer,” which refer to the hottest days during the summer season?

“August is the time of year when it feels like fall and winter will never come again. Yes, those are the dog days of summer. And sure, the image of a dog sweltering in the heat captures the feeling of the month pretty well. It does seem like at least a bit of a stretch to call them dog days, however, especially when all the animals are suffering under the sun.”

It isn’t a canine that is referred to; it is the star Sirius, “the brightest point in the constellation Canis Major, which was a representation of one of Orion’s hunting dogs. The Greeks believed that during the times of year when Sirius and the Sun rose in the sky at the same time (July into August), the combined intensity of the two stars is what caused the summer heat. They were wrong, of course, but the phrase stuck around.”