Alice-in-Wonderland

English

Adjective

Alice-in-Wonderland (comparative more Alice-in-Wonderland, superlative most Alice-in-Wonderland)

1. Alternative form of Alice in Wonderland
   • 1984, Great Britain, Parliament, House of Commons, Parliamentary debates: Official report, volume 75, page 335:

     Members with a fascination for the horrid to look at the explanatory memorandum, which deals with fresh fruit and vegetables. It discloses the most Alice-in- Wonderland situation ever.

   • 2008, Gordon Stobart, Testing Times, page 137:

     What gives this an even more Alice-in-Wonderland feel is that the Average Yearly Progress targets are based on what must be done to achieve this impossible goal...

   • 2011, A. Bowdoin Van Riper, Learning from Mickey, Donald and Walt, page 120:

     After the creature recites the value of pi—erroneously, as it turns out—its mouth disappears and it splits back into separate geometric shapes. It's an Alice-in-Wonderland moment, to be sure.

   • 2012, Margaret Jane Radin, Boilerplate, page 14:

     Declaring that you've agreed to something before you could have known that that is what you were doing has an Alice-in-Wonderland quality to it.

   • 2012, James MacGregor Burns, The Crosswinds of Freedom, 1932–1988:

     There was an Alice-in-Wonderland quality to these discussions: most of the key provisions of the draft agreement, aside from the return of POWs, would be made irrelevant by the transcending legitimation of Hanoi's presence in force south of the DMZ.

   • 2014, John H. Miller, American Political and Cultural Perspectives on Japan:

     Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Mikado (1885) —which was a hit in America as well as Britain—depicted the Japanese as comic aliens from an Alice-in-Wonderland world.

Noun

Alice-in-Wonderland (plural Alices-in-Wonderland or Alice-in-Wonderlands)

1. Alternative form of Alice in Wonderland
   • 1942, Western Flying - Volume 22, Issues 7-12, page 34:

     Now we find Alices-in-Wonderland popping up in Washington, naively believing that they have discovered the cargo airplane and that it is necessary to go outside the aviation industry in order to get transport production rolling so that American troops and munitions may be flown to the fighting fronts.

   • 2001, Phyllis Mindell, How To Say It for Women:

     If you haven't fallen too deeply into the Alice-in-Wonderland of corporate writing, you're probably still in touch with that childhood advantage.

   • 2012, Juan Aguilera, Diego Pardo, M.D.: And the Darkness Within Diego Pardo, M.D.: And the Darkness Within, page 22:

     My leg aches with each step I take toward the elevator; the army of Alice-in-Wonderlands that once travailed the hallways of the hospital are now clad in summer-yellow scrubs.

   • 2019 June 10, “Editor's Viewpoint: Killer McConville's legal action is a sickening irony”, in Belfast Telegraph:

     A case currently before our courts strains our credulity, even in the Alice-in-Wonderland of Northern Ireland.