Insane

How to spell insane

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce insane

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does insane mean?

1. adjectiveIn a state of serious mental illness, or wildly foolish and irrational.
2. adjectiveInformally, extremely great, intense, or hard to believe.

Insane in a sentence

• The plan to drive through the night without resting was completely insane.

• The queue outside the new shop was absolutely insane on opening morning.

• Spending the entire deposit on a single weekend would be insane.

• The traffic on the motorway was insane during the holiday rush.

Where does insane come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin insanus, which combined the negative prefix in-, meaning 'not', with sanus, meaning 'healthy' or 'sound'. The literal sense was therefore 'not of sound mind', a person whose mental health was thought to be unsound. English adopted it in the middle of the 1500s, originally as a fairly clinical or legal description of someone judged mentally ill. The same sanus root sits inside familiar relatives such as 'sane', 'sanity' and even 'sanitary', all of which circle around the idea of being healthy or wholesome. Over time the word loosened in everyday speech to describe anything wildly irrational or, more casually still, anything extreme or astonishing. The spelling stays regular once you remember it is simply 'in' plus 'sane'.

How the word is built

• in- (not)
• san (healthy, sound, from Latin sanus)
• -e