Hacker News Reader

Maybe that’s where the erroneous “e” in “Ayreshire” was meant to be (note: should be Ayrshire)

A bit random, my Grandma went to school in Ayrshire, Iowa [1], which I have to imagine was named after Ayrshire, Scotland.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayrshire,_Iowa

I imagine it was!

I assumed the "mad" part was just some archaic term.

Curious whether it does actually mean something or if it is just a typo.

It’s listed as a form of made in the OED but without any examples close to the 19th century. Webster has this spelling.

It's just a typo. The original has "made". I was expecting the text to be a bit more corrupt, but it looks clean and is probably not an OCR type, but a normal human one.

I'm suspecting a meaning of "marked by uncontrolled excitement". Given deliberate language of the article otherwise.

Suggesting freshly-brewed, not-yet settled nitroglycerine.

I think that “when made” would make more sense in context.

Apparently yes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24673928

It is "when made" in the original: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015030656139&vi...

Thanks. That settles it.