There Is Method in the Madness, and Shakespeare Said So
Madness is severe mental disturbance, or extreme foolishness. The modern habit is to keep the word for behaviour, not for people.
Madness once served as a general word for serious mental illness. Medicine has long since replaced it with specific diagnoses, and applying it to a person now sounds both old-fashioned and unkind. What survives is the sense of extreme folly, and the phrase from *Hamlet*: though this be madness, yet there is method in it.
- Extreme foolishness. *It would be madness to sell now.*
- Wild confusion. *The madness of the January sales.*
- Severe mental disturbance (dated). *A study of madness in the eighteenth century.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | madness | Sheer madness. |
| Adjective | mad | A mad idea. |
| Adverb | madly | Madly in love. |
| Verb | madden | It maddened him. |
| Adjective | maddening | A maddening delay. |
How it is used in a sentence
- Driving in that fog would be madness.The everyday sense: foolish.
- There is method in his madness.From Hamlet, meaning the odd behaviour has a purpose.
- The traffic was madness.Chaos rather than illness.
How the vocabulary changed
- Madness — now used for behaviour, rarely for people
- Mental illness — the neutral modern term
- Asylum — the old name for a psychiatric hospital
- Lunatic — from *luna*, the moon; long obsolete in medicine
- Mad about — in Britain, enthusiastic: mad about cycling
From *mad*, Old English *gemæd*, meaning disabled or foolish. In American English *mad* usually means angry; in British English it means insane or, with *about*, keen.
Mad meaning angry or insane?
American English uses mad for angry. British English uses it for insane or enthusiastic, and says angry or cross for the other.
Is *madness* offensive?
Applied to a person, yes, and it is avoided in careful writing. Applied to a plan or a situation it is ordinary English.