Madness

How to spell madness

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce madness

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does madness mean?

1. nounThe state of being mad, whether mental derangement, wild chaos, or reckless folly.

Madness in a sentence

• Spending the entire bonus on lottery tickets was sheer madness.

• The crowd surged toward the gates in a sudden burst of madness.

Where does madness come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes from the Old English adjective gemǣd or gemǣded, meaning 'driven out of one's wits' or 'maddened', which is rooted in the Germanic family of words for changed or injured states of mind. The bare adjective 'mad' was already in use in early Middle English, and the noun 'madness' was formed by attaching the native suffix '-ness', which English has long used to turn an adjective into the name of its quality or condition. From the start the word covered both literal mental derangement and, more loosely, wild or reckless foolishness, a double sense it still carries today. Over the centuries the strictly clinical meaning faded in favour of figurative uses for chaos, fury, or sheer folly. The spelling is reassuringly phonetic: the only thing to remember is that the double 's' of '-ness' attaches cleanly to 'mad' with no change to the root.

How the word is built

• mad (insane, foolish)
• -ness (noun suffix forming a state or quality)