mad

comparative madder · superlative maddest

1. UKInsane; crazy; mentally deranged.

   He's got this mad idea that he's irresistible to women.

   4 more examples

   You want to spend a thousand pounds on a pair of shoes? Are you mad?

   I have heard my grandsire say full oft, / Extremity of griefs would make men mad.

   c. 1588–1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]

   Sometimes, I feel sure he is as mad as a hatter; and then, just as he is at his maddest, I find there is method in his madness.

   1920 October, Agatha Christie, “The Arrest”, in The Mysterious Affair at Styles […], New York, N.Y.; London: Grosset & Dunlap, published March 1927, page 218

   Dr. Manuel: Is it madness to see the future? To see the destruction rushing towards us? To understand there is no escape? No hope? No, I am not mad. I'm the only sane one left!

   2008, BioWare, Mass Effect (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Eden Prime

   Synonyms: 5150, bananas, barking, barking mad, fey, buggish, buggy, bughouse

2. USinformalAngry; annoyed.

   Are you mad at me?

   2 more examples

   And I punished them oft in euery Synagogue, and compelled them to blaspheme, and being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted them euen vnto strange cities.

   1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Acts 26:11

   She was so mad she wouldn't speak to me for quite a spell, but at last I coaxed her into going up to Miss Emmeline's room and fetching down a tintype of the missing Deacon man.

   1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VI, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC

   Synonyms: agitated, angry, annoyed, apoplectic, bad-tempered, berserk, big mad, blood-boiling

3. USinformalUsed litotically to indicate satisfaction or approval.

   Wow, you really made this pie from scratch? I'm not mad at it.

   2 more examples

   I'm not mad at this little house, though.

   2019, The Real Housewives of Atlanta, season 13, episode 3

   But I mean, once the flow was there, nobody was mad at it.

   2019, “'Thank U' Text: Ariana Grande's Collaborators Break Down The Artist's Latest Album”, in NPR

4. IrelandUKinformalBizarre; incredible.

   It's mad that I got that job back a day after being fired.

5. Extremely foolish or unwise; irrational; imprudent.
6. Wildly confused or excited.

   to be mad with terror, lust, or hatred

   3 more examples

   It is the land of graven images, and they are mad upon their idols.

   1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Jeremiah 1:88

   My brother, quiet as a cat, seems perfectly contented with the internal feelings of his felicity. The Marquis, mad as a kitten, is all in motion to express it, from tongue to heel.

   1787, R. Bage, The Fair Syrian, page 314

   […] at all, just a vast space of desert out in the saltlands of Nevada. It's serious dressing up, the maddest entertainment, craziest art, and at the end there's the burning of a huge effigy, stuffed with pyrotechnics 287.

   2010 May 27, Judy Astley, Blowing It: a brilliantly funny, mad-cap novel guaranteed to make you laugh from bestselling author Judy Astley, Random House, →ISBN, page 287

7. colloquialusuallyon or aboutExtremely enthusiastic about; crazy about; infatuated with; overcome with desire for.

   My wife is soccer-mad.

   3 more examples

   Aren't you just mad for that red dress?

   She's mad on the baking these days.

   Glenereegan is to be sold to the highest bidder to-day.[…]I'm tould - It's Pether Byrne that dhrives Bianconi's car that tould me - that a smalpeen of a Dublin attorney is mad for it.

   1883 January 6, Nugent Robinson, Ave Maria - Volume 9 - Father Tom: A Story of Connemara, page 3

8. Abnormally ferocious or furious; or, rabid, affected with rabies.

   a mad dog

9. New YorkslangAfrican-American VernacularIntensifier, signifying abundance or high quality of a thing; very, much, excellent or many.

   I gotta give you mad props for scoring us those tickets. Their lead guitarist has mad skills. There are always mad girls at those parties.

   Synonyms: wicked, mighty, kinda, helluv, hella

10. Having impaired polarity.

1. IrelandNew YorkUKdialectalnot comparableslangAfrican-American VernacularIntensifier; to a large degree; extremely; exceedingly; very; unbelievably.

   It's mad hot today.

   2 more examples

   He was driving mad slow.

   He seems mad keen on her.

   Synonyms: hella, helluv, wicked

present singular third person mads · participle present madding · participle past madded · past madded

1. intransitiveobsoleteTo be or become mad.First known use 14th–19th c.

   The imperial Elizabetta gazed with surprise at the youthful and unpretending appearance of the little being that had set the world madding.

   1832, [Washington Irving], “The Legend of the Rose of the Alhambra, or the Page and the Ger-Falcon”, in The Alhambra: A Series of Tales and Sketches of the Moors and Spaniards. […], volume II, Philadelphia, Pa.: [Henry Charles] Carey & [Isaac] Lea, →OCLC, page 131

2. JamaicaUScolloquialTo madden, to anger, to frustrate.First known use 15th c.

   This musick mads me, let it sound no more.

   1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene 5]

   2 more examples

   He that mads others, if he were so humoured, would be as mad himself, as much grieved and tormented […].

   1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition I, section 2, member 4, subsection iv

   Carolina! Whine your body gyal! Make Dem know say you have it fi mad dem

   1993 March 22, “Oh Carolina”, in Pure Pleasure, performed by Shaggy (musician)

plural MADs

1. abbreviationcountableinitialismuncountableInitialism of mutual assured destruction or mutually assured destruction.

   But the American government worries that MAD-style deterrence will no longer work. Terrorists, for example, might not care about the threat of destruction.

   2005 February 24, “Muon-assured defence”, in The Economist, →ISSN

   1 more example

   [T]he only bombs anyone dropped—on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—were Uncle Sam's message to non-nuclear Japan. MAD was salvation. MAD was security. MAD was the way of life most of us grew up with, the prevailing logic of uneasy peace. So whatever became of our mad, mad world?

   2005 February 7, Peter Preston, “A nuclear Iran is not the problem”, in The Guardian

2. abbreviationcountableinitialismuncountableInitialism of magnetic anomaly detector.
3. abbreviationcountableinitialismuncountablebiologyInitialism of mothers against decapentaplegic.
4. abbreviationacronymcountableuncountableastrophysicsAcronym of magnetically-arrested disc, a type of black hole accretion disc).
5. abbreviationcountableinitialismuncountabledental; prosthetics; dental; prostheticsmedicineInitialism of mandibular advancement device.

1. abbreviationacronymcomputer languagesAcronym of Michigan algorithm decoder, a programming language, a variant of ALGOL, developed in 1959 at the University of Michigan.

1. A diminutive of the female given name Madeline (and its variants).

   Mad, your boyfriend did a really shitty thing. In response, you got rat-faced and kissed someone.

   2014, Giovanna Fletcher, You're the One That I Want

1. abbreviationacronymuncountablebiologyAcronym of mothers against decapentaplegic.