{"id":28030,"date":"2016-09-09T08:18:44","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T13:18:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=28030"},"modified":"2016-09-09T18:23:26","modified_gmt":"2016-09-09T23:23:26","slug":"mad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=28030","title":{"rendered":"Mad"},"content":{"rendered":"

I'm in San Francisco for InterSpeech 2016<\/a>, where I'm involved in four papers over three days, so blogging will probably be a bit light. But I have a few minutes before the morning starts, so let me continue\u00a0the discussion of Gabriel Roth's feelings (\"Paper cut to the heart<\/a>\", 9\/8\/2016)\u00a0by quoting from\u00a0Bill S's comment<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Some of the context for M-W's reply is (I would think) the prescriptivist injunctions against the use of \"I feel like\" for \"I think that\" \u2014 I've seen waves of complaints about \"I feel like\" washing up on various internet shores over the past year (may be recency effect though). If read as ironic deployment of prescriptivism against prescriptivism, it has enough artfulness to counter the rudeness (to me, anyway \u2014 you don't get a good opportunity for a one-liner like that every day, and it would be a shame to pass it up).<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed: some prior LLOG coverage:<\/p>\n

\"'I feel like'<\/a>\", 8\/24\/2013
\n\"Feelings, beliefs, and thoughts<\/a>\", 5\/1\/2016
\n\"Feeling in the Supreme Court<\/a>\", 5\/3\/2016<\/p>\n

And it's also worth quoting\u00a0John McIntyre<\/a>'s comment:<\/p>\n

I rather thought his set of tweets was a labored attempt at humor that, whether he knows better or not, appeared to betray an ignorance of what dictionaries are for and how lexicographers work. His talking about feeling ambivalent made the Merriam-Webster response concise and apt. The language doesn't care how you feel about it.<\/span><\/p>\n

But I want to add\u00a0a note about the history and current status of mad<\/em><\/strong> used to mean \"angry\", \u00a0which makes this case an especially problematic one to use as the starting point for a complaint that \"Merriam-Webster is turning into the 'chill' parent who lets your friends come over and get high\".<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As of 2000, 16 years ago, the OED gave mad<\/em><\/strong> a sense 6.b.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0glossed as \"Angry, irate, cross. Also, in weakened sense: annoyed, exasperated (with \u2020against, at, with, etc.)\", with citations from the 15th century onwards, e.g.<\/p>\n

c1425<\/strong> \u00a0(\u25b8?a1400) \u00a0 \u00a0Arthur<\/em> 234 \u00a0 Whan \u00feis lettre was open & rad, \u00dee Bretons & all men were mad And wolde \u00fee messager scle.
\na1604<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 M. Hanmer Chron. Ireland<\/em> 125 in J. Ware Two Hist. Ireland<\/em> (1633) \u00a0\u00a0 Roderic was mad, and in his rage, caused his pledges head..to be cut off.
\n1611<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 Bible (King James)<\/em> Acts xxvi. 11\u00a0\u00a0 And being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted them euen vnto strange cities.
\n1766<\/strong> \u00a0 D. Garrick Neck or Nothing<\/em> i. ii. 15 \u00a0 He was damn'd mad, that he cou'd not be at the wedding.
\n1902<\/strong> \u00a0 W. James Varieties Relig. Experience<\/em> xi. 264 \u00a0 He can't \u2018get mad\u2019 at any of his alternatives; and the career of a man beset by such an all-round amiability is hopeless.
\n1939<\/strong> \u00a0 J. Steinbeck Grapes of Wrath<\/em> 260 \u00a0 Goin' aroun' stirrin' up trouble. Gettin' folks mad.<\/p>\n

It's true that they characterize this sense as\u00a0\"Now colloq. (chiefly N. Amer.) and Brit. regional\".<\/p>\n

But in a random sample of 100 (out of 1270) examples from COHA<\/a> texts published in the 1990s, I find that 56 mean \"angry\" — almost \u00a0none of which seem especially \"colloquial\" — while only 16 mean \"crazy\", mostly in expressions like \"drive X mad\" and \"go mad\". (The other 28\u00a0are mostly in the idiom \"like mad\" — e.g. \"leaking like mad\" — or in proper names like \"Mad River\" or \"Mad Max\" or \"Mad Cow disease\", the title\u00a0\"Mad About You\", etc.)<\/p>\n

Some examples:<\/p>\n

She sat up straight, suddenly seething mad.
\nJacob got mad. The haze made him jumpy and irritable …
\nWhen she got mad, her family ran for cover …
\nHe was mad at God because there was no one else to be mad at.
\nBut he wasn't mad; he was actually laughing a bit.
\nA policeman came, not the one who was mad at her but a Santa Claus policeman — fat, ruddy, and kind-talking.<\/p>\n

So 20-odd years ago, when most of those parents, chill or otherwise, were themselves growing up, the \"angry\" sense of mad<\/em><\/strong> was\u00a0already beating the \"crazy\" sense in serious American writing by 56\/16 = 3.5 to 1.<\/p>\n

And a quick search of the slate.com web site (where Gabriel Roth is a senior editor) turns up many recent examples of mad = \"angry\":<\/p>\n

First they laugh at you, then they get mad at you, then they fight you.
\nEveryone is still mad at Ted Cruz
\nThe current front-runner opted out of Thursday night's debate because he's still mad at Kelly for questioning him about his misogynist past
\nHave you been seeing tweets from people who are mad at Amy Schumer when you log into Twitter?
\nAre voters this year really mad at \u201cthe establishment\u201d?
\nSo why are all the queer people in my feeds mad about this Daily Beast Grindr story?
\nJordan Davis, who was killed in a gas station by a man who was mad about his loud music<\/p>\n

Even a search on Slate for examples of \"mad about\" from the past year<\/a> seems to turn up mostly \"angry\" meanings.<\/p>\n

As John McIntyre noted, Roth seems to misunderstand what dictionaries are supposed to do. But even if we agree with Roth\u00a0that lexicographers should hold the line against those kids today and their out-of-control linguistic drug usage, his\u00a0choice of mad<\/em>=\"angry\" \u00a0as a casus belli<\/em> was really tone deaf. The allegedly offensive sense has been around for more than 500 years, has been dominant in\u00a0American English for more than a generation, and is far and away the most common usage in Roth's own magazine.<\/p>\n

Complaining about M-W not holding the patriarchal line against mad<\/em>=\"angry\" is like complaining about parents who allow their female children to display their ankles and even their calves, or let their male children go to school without a tie on.<\/p>\n

And finally, Roth really should have noted that people have been complaining about M-W's abrogration of strict-parent\u00a0responsibility ever since the (in)famous 3rd edition came out in 1961. See David Skinner's wonderful book The Story of Ain't<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(and maybe also James Sledd and Wilma Ebbitt's Dictionaries and That Dictionary<\/a>). \u00a0<\/em>There's some discussion of that early-1960s furor\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I'm in San Francisco for InterSpeech 2016, where I'm involved in four papers over three days, so blogging will probably be a bit light. But I have a few minutes before the morning starts, so let me continue\u00a0the discussion of Gabriel Roth's feelings (\"Paper cut to the heart\", 9\/8\/2016)\u00a0by quoting from\u00a0Bill S's comment: Some of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,248],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-peeving","category-usage"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28030"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28053,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28030\/revisions\/28053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}