Mad as a March Hare Trivia Quiz

Answer: Time of year

This is an English phrase that is associated with the European hare (Lepus europaeus) in the breeding season, which peaks in March in the northern hemisphere. During this breeding season, the hare demonstrates unusual behaviour including boxing with other hares, jumping vertically without reason and generally behaving abnormally. The phrase is used to describe any human or animal that behaves unpredictably and irrationally.

The phrase can be traced back to a poem, "Blowbol's Test" (unknown author, circa 1500). By 1528, the phrase appeared in the works of John Skelton. However, it was popularised in the mainstream in 1865 in Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", in which the March Hare was an actual character.

Answer: Bell tower

A belfry refers to a bell tower, though strictly speaking, it is the part of a bell tower in which bells are housed. (Etymologically, belfries are not associated with bells. "Belfry" is derived from the Old French "berfrei", used in medieval times to describe a wooden tower used in besieging fortifications.) However, bell towers tend to be on the top of buildings such as churches and in this case, the belfry represents the top part of something. In this idiomatic context, it is the human head.

"Bats in the Belfry" has all the hallmarks of an English Gothic novel involving turrets and parsonages. However, the origin of the phrase is American. The earliest example found is from the Ohio newspaper "The Newark Daily Advocate" in October 1900:
"To his hundreds of friends and acquaintances in Newark, these [puerile] and senseless attacks on Hon. John W. Cassingham are akin to the vaporings of the fellow with a large flock of bats in his belfry."

Another American, Ambrose Bierce, explored the term in "Cosmopolitan Magazine", in July 1907, describing it as a new phrase:
"He was especially charmed with the phrase 'bats in the belfry', and would indubitably substitute it for 'possessed of a devil', the Scriptural diagnosis of insanity."

The photo depicts a belfry atop an American Midwest church.

Answer: False

It is actually the other way round: "Off your own back" originated as a mishearing of "Off your own bat". The former has gained sufficient usage to be considered a viable contemporary alternative to the correct version. However, etymologists have dismissed it as a straightforward error.

At one time, "Off your own bat" was idiomatic for going insane. However, this meaning is no longer in use.

Its first usage can be traced back to cricket historian and statistician Henry Thomas Waghorn, in "Cricket Scores" in 1742.

The first usage without a cricket reference can be traced back to 1845 when it was found in "Fragment on Irish Affairs" by the Rev. Sydney Smith:
"Dr. Hodgson is a very worthy, amiable man...[However I]...suppose he had no revenues but what he got off his own bat."

The photo depicts a street cricket game in Lahore, Pakistan.

Answer: Kidnapping

Scots/Irish Gaelic folklore involved fairies appearing from some underground lair or an invisible world (from a parallel universe, perhaps?) and then spiriting people away, particularly children.

In medieval Europe, it was a common belief there was an alternate world populated by fairies, elves, pixies, leprechauns and goblins. The belief in people being taken or spirited away by the fairies was very well-known and accepted. "Away with the fairies" first came to be used quite recently - it is a 20th-century attribution. In a figurative sense, it means not present or disconnected. It also had a connotation of not being sane but this latter attribute seems to be no longer in use.

The earliest written example of the phrase appears to be from a New Zealand newspaper, "The Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle", which, in 1909, retells a story from Ireland, in which a defendant, Michael Coyne attempts to convince the jury that he hadn't murdered his competitor, James Bailey:
"[Coyne] 'Don't mind your son; that is not him you see there.' Bridget Bailey understood that he meant that her brother was away with the fairies".

While it has been known for over a hundred years, "away with the fairies" didn't begin to be used in its current idiomatic sense until the 1980s.

The photo implies a child trying to escape from a kidnapping fairy.

Answer: World War I

"Basket case" originated in WWI to refer to servicemen who had all four limbs amputated and therefore needed to be carried around in a basket. In a figurative sense, it meant someone or something that could not function properly.

It was never used to describe a single person but was first used by the U.S. Command on Public Information in March 1919 only to deny any such servicemen existing:
"The Surgeon General of the Army ... denies ... that there is any foundation for the stories that have been circulated ... of the existence of 'basket cases' in our hospitals."

Interestingly, the phrase was not used again until WWII, when it was used in a similar context to the original case in the form of another denial from the Surgeon General, Major General Norman T. Kirk. In May 1944, in "Yank", the Army Weekly, he said:
"... there is nothing to rumours of so-called 'basket cases' - cases of men with both legs and both arms amputated."

After this, the phrase entered the vernacular as a person or organisation which could not function properly. It gained further notoriety when it became a synonym for someone who was mentally or emotionally incapacitated.

The photo depicts a trench which was a symbol of warfare in WWI.

Answer: Prison

"Stir" is slang for prison. The origin of this word is not definitively known. There are two theories: The first is from Start Newgate (1757), the London prison. The term was broadened in 1823 to include any prison. The second theory is that it was derived from the Romani "stardo" meaning imprisoned, which is related to the noun "staripen", a prison.

A 1908 dictionary of disagreeable terms called "Criminal Slang" by Joseph Sullivan defined "stir-crazy (noun)" as "a man whose mind has become affected by serving long sentences." By the mid-1900s, "stir-crazy" was being used as an adjective to describe someone who was mentally ill because of long imprisonment. In more recent times the word has come to mean any protracted period of confinement, such as the COVID lockdowns. In this sense "stir-crazy" has become a synonym for "cabin fever".

The photo depicts Alcatraz, a prison built on an island in San Francisco Bay.

Answer: Profusion of science fiction literature - 1950s

The idiom "living on another planet" can be traced back to the profusion of science fiction literature caused by the popularisation of space exploration in the 1950s. At this time, as mankind's obsession with space grew, the concept of living on other planets was a major theme in science fiction. (It was in the 60s, only a decade later, when US President Kennedy announced the Space Race this became a potential reality, not a total fiction). Contemporaneously, this idiom is used figuratively to describe someone who may be a daydreamer or seemingly detached from reality, lost in their thoughts or even having different priorities to the people surrounding them. It can be used to name those who have unconventional or eccentric viewpoints.

This idiom is often used casually or in informal settings to depict a sense of disconnectedness or other-worldliness.

The photo shows Sputnik 1 which was the first artificial Earth satellite launched by the Soviets on 4 October 1957.

Answer: False

Stark is an adjective pertaining to severity or bleak isolation. When we think of the phrase stark naked, we are close to the meaning of this idiom. The 'stark' here means completely or totally.
Stark is from Middle English stark, "starc", via Old English "stearc" or "starc" (stiff, unyielding). It is simply an intensifier.

In 1489, "stark mad" was used by John Skelton in "The Death of the Earl of Northumberland":
"I say, ye comoners, why wer ye so stark mad?"

The phrase was intensified further in John Dryden's "Persius Flaccus" (1693):
"Art thou of Bethlem's Noble College free? Stark, staring mad."

This is a reference to the world's oldest psychiatric hospital: The Bethlem Royal Hospital, London, commonly known by the colloquial name of Bedlam. In Dryden's times, only two forms of madness were known - melancholia, now known as depression, and raving madness. In 1734, Henry Fielding used the more literal 'stark raving mad' in "The Intriguing Chambermaid". This is believed to be probably the first usage of that version of the term.

The photo depicts a glass of beer that is totally filled.

Answer: Fruitcake

This idiom is in two parts. The earliest use of "nutty" in an idiomatic context was in 1821, when it was used in the context of being amorous or in love by an unknown author. Lord Byron, in "Don Juan" (1823) used "nutty" to describe the state of being both amorous and fascination.

The attribution of "nutty" as a synonym for "crazy" had been influenced by the figurative application of "nut" to "head" in 1846. Later, in 1860, "be off one's nut" was used to describe insanity.

The second part of the idiom "...as a fruitcake" can be traced back to 1935 when bakers in the south of the US loaded fruitcakes with nuts according to "The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms" by Christine Ammer (1997).

The photo depicts bakers going about their craft - the only answer that was a baked product was a fruitcake.

Answer: The Caine Mutiny

Marbles are little glass or metal balls that form a children's game. The word comes from the French word "meubles', meaning "furniture". In the 19th century "marbles" was also used to mean "personal effects" or "stuff". Marbles were a popular toy for children at this time. They were somewhat of a status symbol, displaying value and worth. To a child, then, to lose one's marbles was to suffer a great loss. In turn, the use of "marbles" as a slang term meaning "wits" or "common sense", implying the loss of something that is very important to the individual, appeared to have been derived from the image of a saddened child having lost his prized toys.

An early figurative example of "Losing one's marbles" was found in an August 1886 edition of the "St. Louis Globe-Democrat":
"He has roamed the block all morning like a boy who had lost his marbles".

This transition to the "losing one's mind" figurative meaning began in the US. The Ohio newspaper "The Portsmouth Times", reported in April 1898 that demonstrated marbles as a synonym for mental capacity:
"Prof. J. M. Davis, of Rio Grande college, was selected to present J. W Jones as Gallia's candidate, but got his marbles mixed and did as much for the institution of which he is the noted head as he did for his candidate".

By 1927, an edition of "American Speech" defined the term unambiguously:
"Marbles: doesn't have all his (verb phrase): mentally deficient. 'There goes a man who doesn't have all his marbles.'"

The Humphrey Bogart movie popularised the saying. In time the derived idiom "losing it" was a truncated version of the original phrase. It became popular as a saying in the late 20th century.

The photo depicts a memorial of Captain Bligh, who was famous for another mutiny - mutiny on the Bounty.