Down the rabbit hole

 A recent question in the UsingEnglish forum has got me thinking about the expression 'down the rabbit hole'; and, predictably enough, that's where I've gone.

'Down  the rabbit hole' - the wilderness years and sudden rise

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the source of the quote, was published in 1865, but apart from a few uses in the later years of the twentieth century it didn't take off until the turn of the millennium. And then the curve rose steeply. Why was that?

Most social media apps started in the new millennium, with one or two early starters in the '90s, and they were very good at spreading, misinterpreting, and amplifying wacky ideas. In the BBC podcast/Radio 4 programme  Things Fell Apart  (now in its second series) Jon Ronson looks at some of the results  (interestingly, if you can tolerate his voice – which for me is quite trying).

<alternative-meaning>
Later in that UsingEnglish discussion an alternative interpretation of the phrase was

mooted – if that's the word...

<passive-agression>
(more like ASSERTED, it seems to me; but I take it in my stride, as ever.  I'll not rise to it)
</passive-agression>

... in which  it refers simply to a series of digressions. But I think a more  useful interpretation of the phrase involves threads of an argument getting further and further away from reality (or, as Alice thought, "curiouser and curiouser".)

</alternative-meaning>

Anyway, it looks as though the expression "down the rabbit hole"  took off at about  the same time as the rise of social media – not that correlation has to imply causation. It seems plausible though. And I'd hazard a guess that very few of the users of this expression have any idea of its provenance.

But another issue turned up in my investigations – the appearance of a similar expression. but with "a" rather than "the".

The version with "a" is less than half as common as the version with "the". This makes sense, as "down a rabbit hole" invites a definition (such as "where black equals white amd white black').

But the Google Ngram Viewer makes it possible to focus the search on American/British English, and this shows an ineresting difference in usage: whereas in American English the version with just "a" is about a third as common as the "the" version, in British English it is well over half as common.

<proviso>
I have said elsewhere that there may be a subjective/dubious argument behind the AE/BE distinction, but in this case it seems to me that it is probably simply geographic.
</proviso>

Enough of this, or as Wordworth put it in The Tables Turned

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;

Or surely you'll grow double:

Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;

Why all this toil and trouble?

L'Envoi

I see The Times Feedback column has had to resurrect the Great Referendums Debate, a perennial so hardy that it merits capitals just as much as l'Affaire Dreyfus.

I addressed this issue in a post so old that a crucial link is now dead. So here it is again, in new words: English doesn't have to follow the rules of Latin grammar (as that Feedback column points out). But even if it did, Latin grammar requires that a gerund (which referendum is – an abbreviation of referendum ad populum [= 'the putting of a question to the people']) HAS NO PLURAL:

I. The Gerund 

The Gerund is a verbal noun, always active in force. The infintive of the verbs supplies the nominative case: Legere est difficile = To read is difficult (reading is difficult) The other cases are formed by adding -nd- to the present stem of the verb (-iend- for 3rd conjugation I-stems and all 4th conjugation verbs), plus the neuter singular endings of the second declension. The Gerund has no plural [my emphasis]. 

Source

 In an update to another post I wrote:

<reductio-ad-absurdum>
There are in principle four cases, each of which could have its own word:

• referendum (one of these things)

• referendums (two or more of these things)

• referenda (on the analogy of "agenda", a list of questions to be put to the people; to be clear, the usage would be "a referenda")

• referendas (two or more such lists)

Fortunately we don't live in a world where this could ever work.👺

</reductio-ad-absurdum>

Some dictionaries (unaccountably) say that referenda is an acceptable plural "in formal contexts", but – it being simply wrong both in English grammar and in Latin grammar – I don't see why formal contexts call for a display of ignorance.

b