bughouse

plural bughouses

1. USslangA flea-infested hotel, lodging-house etc.
2. USslangA prison.
3. USslangA hospital, especially a lunatic asylum.

   Well, he was ready for the bughouse, certainly.

   1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 277

4. South AfricaslangA cheap and dirty cinema.
5. abbreviationclippingboard gamesClipping of bughouse chess

comparative more bughouse · superlative most bughouse

1. USslangCrazy, insane.

   Ewball, man, that is some bughouse talk.

   2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage, published 2007, page 1127

   2 more examples

   “Get up and dress. I can stand a rattlesnake, but I hate a liar. Do I have to tell you again?” He caught McGuire by the neck and stood him on the floor. / “Say, friend,” cried McGuire wildly, “are you bughouse? I’m sick—see? I’ll croak if I got to hustle. What’ve I done to yer?”—he began his chronic whine—“I never asked yer to⸺”

   1903 February, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “Hygeia at the Solito”, in Everybody’s Magazine, volume VIII, number 2, New York, N.Y.: John Wanamaker, →ISSN, page 177, columns 1–2

   'Just what's up on this train? It seems bughouse to me.'

   1934, Agatha Christie, chapter 8, in Murder on the Orient Express, London: HarperCollins, published 2017, page 254