Word.ws English Dictionary

mad as a March hare

mad as a March hare adjective: crazy, demented.

Adjective

mad as a March hare (not comparable)

  1. (informal, simile) Crazy, demented.
    • [S]he was with childe in hir huſbande his abſence, or that hir louer vſed hir fondly in open preſence, as the preſumption was not onely vehement, but alſo the fact too too apparent. Hir vnfortunat huſband had not ſooner notice gyuen him vpon his returne of theſe ſorowfull newes, then his fingers...1577, Richard Stanyhurst [i.e., Richard Stanihurst], “[The Historie of Irelande […].] A Treatise Contayning a Playne and Perfect Description of Irelande, […].”, in Raphaell Holinshed, The Firste...
    • His nephew by marriage—his wife's own blood kin—had gone crackers and killed a man. […] When you added in the fact that the young man in question remained just as mad as a March hare, you could understand why the governor only wanted it to go away, and as soon as possible.1996, Stephen King, The Green Mile

Synonyms of mad as a March hare

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Origin of mad as a March hare

Possibly from the boisterous behaviour of hares in their breeding season.

Questions about mad as a March hare

What does mad as a March hare mean?
Mad as a March hare means crazy, demented.
What part of speech is mad as a March hare?
Mad as a March hare is an adjective.

Words near mad as a March hare in the dictionary

  1. mad as a brush
  2. mad as a cut snake
  3. mad as a fish
  4. mad as a hatter
  5. mad as a hornet
  6. mad as a March hare
  7. mad as a meat axe
  8. mad as a mongoose
  9. mad as a wet hen
  10. mad as cut snakes
  11. mad as hops

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mad as a March hare (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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