As Mad as a March Hare

     I often wonder about phrase origins. I figured that I would look at the saying "as mad as a March hare" today in honor of both the Easter bunny's visit today and the fact that Easter has fallen in March this year, something that doesn't happen very often.

     Rabbits and hares are infamous for multiplying, and I'm not referring to their math skills. As March is the beginning of the mating season that lasts several months for these critters, they tend to be highly excitable and sometimes downright violent. This phrase has been in use since at least the 16th century and was used frequently enough in speech that it was included in John Heywood's collection of proverbs in 1546.

Beware the Ides of March

     Do you ever wonder where certain phrases came from or how exactly they originated? Since a lot of popular phrases come from literature I thought that it might be fun to periodically take a break from reviews and research such phrase origins.

     The Ides of March dates back to the days when the Romans were a powerful empire. The Romans didn't number their days like we do today, instead they based their calendar on the lunar cycle. Kalends usually fell on the 1st day of the month and represented the new moon. Ides was the full moon which generally occurred on the 13th of short months (such as January, April, June, etc.) and 15th of long months (March and October for example). Nones is halfway between the Kalends and the Ides and most probably the day of the half moon, this denotes the 7th or 9th, depending on the length of the month. The Romans would refer to days in a system very similar to their numbering system where October 14th would merely be considered the day before the Ides of October.