MEXICAN WAVE

noun Sometimes in the form Mexico wave (Business World) (Lifestyle and Leisure) A rising-and-falling effect which ripples successively across different sections of a crowd; also, a similar effect in the movement of statistics etc. Etymology: The effect, which looks like a moving wave, was so named because it was first widely publicized by television pictures of sports crowds doing it at the World Cup football competition in Mexico City in 1986. History and Usage: The Mexican wave was apparently first practised (under the name human wave) by American football crowds in the early eighties; the crowd in the grandstand expresses appreciation of what is happening in the match by standing up one lateral section at a time, raising their arms, and then sitting down again as the next section rises. When this was done at Mexico City, it was seen on television by millions of people and later widely copied. The figurative use of the term is very recent, and perhaps unlikely to survive. Play was first delayed when another rendition of the Mexican wave, that mental aberration which cricket should long have discouraged, was accompanied by a confetti storm of torn-up paper. The Times 12 June 1989, p. 46 Unlike the crash in 1987 and the mini crash last October the Mexican wave effect, by which market movements sweep around the globe from Tokyo to Hong Kong to London to Wall Street, has failed to materialise. Guardian 26 Apr. 1990, p. 11