W. Somerset Maughamの "The Moon and Sixpence" を読んでいます。 'L' の章から引用します。
He felt himself at home, and he made up his mind there and then, in a miniute, that he would live the rest of his life in Alexandra. He had no great difficulty in leaving the ship, and in twenty-four hours, with all his belongings, he was on shore.
'The Captain must have thought you as mad as a hatter', I smiled.
"as mad as a hatter" は "mad" を強調する表現であることは分かりますが、なんで "a hatter" なのか気になります。
・Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary: If someone is as mad as a hatter, they are crazy. Her sister's as mad as a hatter and if you ask me she's not much better herself. Note: In the 19th century, `hatters' or hat-makers used nitrate of mercury to treat their fabrics. This substance is poisonous, and if the hat-makers breathed it in, they often suffered brain damage. As a result, hatters were traditionally thought of as mad. In Lewis Carroll's children's story `Alice in Wonderland' (1865), one of the characters is a hatter who behaves very strangely. Carroll may have based the character on a well-known Oxford furniture dealer, Theophilus Carter, who was known as the `Mad Hatter'.
何か眉唾の語源ですね。
He felt himself at home, and he made up his mind there and then, in a miniute, that he would live the rest of his life in Alexandra. He had no great difficulty in leaving the ship, and in twenty-four hours, with all his belongings, he was on shore.
'The Captain must have thought you as mad as a hatter', I smiled.
"as mad as a hatter" は "mad" を強調する表現であることは分かりますが、なんで "a hatter" なのか気になります。
・Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary: If someone is as mad as a hatter, they are crazy. Her sister's as mad as a hatter and if you ask me she's not much better herself. Note: In the 19th century, `hatters' or hat-makers used nitrate of mercury to treat their fabrics. This substance is poisonous, and if the hat-makers breathed it in, they often suffered brain damage. As a result, hatters were traditionally thought of as mad. In Lewis Carroll's children's story `Alice in Wonderland' (1865), one of the characters is a hatter who behaves very strangely. Carroll may have based the character on a well-known Oxford furniture dealer, Theophilus Carter, who was known as the `Mad Hatter'.
何か眉唾の語源ですね。
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