Alice-in-Wonderland

comparative more Alice-in-Wonderland · superlative most Alice-in-Wonderland

1. alternativeAlternative form of Alice in Wonderland.

   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, Margaret Jane Radin, Boilerplate, page 14

   5 more examples

   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.

   1984, Great Britain, Parliament, House of Commons, Parliamentary debates: Official report, volume 75, page 335

   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...

   2008, Gordon Stobart, Testing Times, page 137

   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.

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

   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.

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

   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.

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

plural Alices-in-Wonderland · plural Alice-in-Wonderlands

1. alternativeAlternative form of Alice in Wonderland.

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

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

   3 more examples

   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.

   1942, Western Flying - Volume 22, Issues 7-12, page 34

   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.

   2001, Phyllis Mindell, How To Say It for Women

   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.

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