Frantic

How to spell frantic

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce frantic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does frantic mean?

1. adjectiveMarked by wild, uncontrolled activity, urgency, or emotion.

Frantic in a sentence

• There was a frantic rush to finish the report before the deadline.

• She made a frantic search of the house for her lost passport.

Where does frantic come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek phren, meaning 'mind' or 'wits', which gave rise to phrenitis, a name for an inflammation of the brain thought to cause delirium. From there came the Greek phrenitikos and the Latin phreneticus, describing someone wildly disturbed in mind. Old French reshaped this into frenetique, and Middle English borrowed it in the 1300s, where the spelling drifted into the everyday form 'frantic' while the more bookish 'frenetic' survived alongside it. Over the centuries the medical sense of madness softened into the modern meaning of being wildly hurried, anxious, or out of control. The shared phren root still links frantic to frenzy and frenetic, which is worth remembering, since the modern spelling keeps the plain 'a' rather than the 'e' of those relatives.

How the word is built

• frant- (from Greek phren: mind, by way of phrenetic/frenetic)
• -ic (adjective suffix)