Where does the saying "barking mad" come from?

Question

My 7 year old just asked me why do people say "barking mad" so we were wondering where does it come from.

Answer 1

This may answer your question: From Paul Hughes: “Where does the term barking mad come from? My theory is that it comes from: One stop short of Barking, referring to the London underground station. Any other ideas?”

[A] I can see the way you’re thinking: there are lots of phrases along these lines (sorry, accidental pun) that suggest somebody has less than his full complement of little grey cells: “Two sandwiches short of a picnic”, “three sheep short in the top paddock”, “two bricks short of a load”.

And the name of the East London suburb is a seductive choice for the origins of this slang term. Peter Ackroyd, in his recent book London: A Biography goes so far as to suggest that monks in medieval times had a lunatic asylum there, which gave rise to the term. The problem with Mr Ackroyd’s idea is that the evidence strongly suggests the term is nothing like so old as that.

The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains not a single reference to barking mad and I can’t find an example in my electronic database of more than 4,000 works of literature. Eric Partridge, in his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, dates it to about 1965.

Nicholas Shearing of the OED kindly hunted through their database of citations and found that their earliest reference is actually from as far back as 1933, from Mr Jiggins of Jigginstown by Christine Pakenham (Countess Longford): “But he was mad! Barking mad!”. By the 1960s, barking was being used alone. Subscriber Anne Hegerty found this in a Nancy Mitford story, Don’t Tell Alfred, of 1960: “If Dr Jore comes here every day like he says he’s going to he will drive me mad. Really, properly barking”.

All these pointers add up to a strong presumption that barking mad is a bit of relatively modern British slang. The idea behind the saying is most likely that the person referred to is so deranged that he or she barks like a dog, or resembles a mad dog, or one that howls at the full moon.

Answer 2

The fact that people can get rabies (aka hydrophobia) from dogs led to the folk belief that as the disease took hold people went mad, and began grovelling on all fours and barking like dogs. They also believed that a person with rabies would attack and bite others, like a mad (rabid) dog.
"Barking mad" then came to mean completely round the bend.

Answer 3

It was probably caused by the following:

In years gone by, the wheat used to make flour for breadmaking sometime due to weather conditions, had a fungus on it called Ergot. In 1976 Linnda Caporael offered the first evidence that the Salem witch trials followed an outbreak of rye ergot. Ergot is a fungus blight that forms hallucinogenic drugs in bread. Its victims can appear bewitched when they're actually stoned.

Ergot thrives in a cold winter followed by a wet spring. The victims of ergot might suffer paranoia and hallucinations, twitches and spasms, cardiovascular trouble, and stillborn children. Ergot also seriously weakens the immune system.

Now Mary Matossian tells a story about rye ergot that reaches far beyond Salem. She studies seven centuries of demographics, weather, literature, and crop records from Europe and America.

Down through history, Matossian argues, drops in population have followed diets heavy in rye bread and weather that favors ergot. During the huge depopulation in the early years of the Black Death, right after 1347, conditions were ideal for ergot.

Many symptoms of ergot poisoning and the plague are similar. They probably coexisted. The worst plague damage occurred where ergot suppressed the human immune system and made people vulnerable. Records of plague deaths show huge regional variations. The plague probably followed pockets of rye ergot.

And what about witch hunts? The symptoms of bewitchment are consistent, but the way those symptoms were received was not. Crazy behavior was commonplace in the medieval plague years. The mad "Dance of Death" is a theme shot through medieval iconography. The spasms suffered by ergot victims were called St. Vitus Dance. Do you remember Ingmar Bergman's wonderful movie about the plague, The Seventh Seal? It began and ended with the figure of death leading the doomed in an eerie dance across a hilltop.

Answer 4

Could come from two instances:

1) dogs barking at the moon.

2) dogs barking and snarling with rabies, which drives them mad.

Just guessing, but take your pick.

Answer 5

Maybe because people bark when they are mad? Sorry thats a bit rubbish its the best I could come up with i think the first answer is a good one!

Answer 6

i think it may come from dogs with rabies barking madly therfore being barking mad?!

Answer 7

From dogs barking at the moon, from this we also get lunatic

Answer 8

Mad dogs and Englishmen?

Answer 9

There was a large mental hospital in Barking, Essex. Anyone sent there was, yes you,ve guessed it.

Answer 10

Have you ever been SO mad that you almost howled? It's when we get so mad that we become a little "baser" in our behavior... Emotions can devolve people sometimes!