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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

mad.

Insane; crazy; mentally deranged.

3 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈmæd//ˈmæːd/Australia, Southern-England/ˈmaːd/Northumbria/ˈmɛə̯d/
  1. Insane; crazy; mentally deranged.

    UK
    You want to spend a thousand pounds on a pair of shoes? Are you mad?
    He's got this mad idea that he's irresistible to women.
  2. Angry; annoyed.

    US · informal
    Are you mad at me?
  3. Used litotically to indicate satisfaction or approval.

    US · informal
    Wow, you really made this pie from scratch? I'm not mad at it.
  4. Bizarre; incredible.

    Ireland · UK · informal
    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
  7. Extremely enthusiastic about; crazy about; infatuated with; overcome with desire for.

    colloquial · usually
    Aren't you just mad for that red dress?
    My wife is soccer-mad.
  8. Abnormally ferocious or furious; or, rabid, affected with rabies.

    a mad dog
  9. Intensifier, signifying abundance or high quality of a thing; very, much, excellent or many.

    New-York · slang
    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.
  10. Having impaired polarity.

Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱe? Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm Proto-Germanic *ga- Proto-West Germanic *ga- Old English ġe- Proto-Indo-European *mey-? Proto-Indo-European *meyth₂- Proto-Indo-European *moyth₂-éye-tider. Proto-Germanic *maidijanąder. Old English *mǣdan Old English ġemǣdan, ġemǣded Middle English mad English mad From Middle English mad, madde, madd, medd, from Old English ġemǣd, ġemǣded (“enraged”), past participle of ġemǣdan, *mǣdan (“to make insane or foolish”), from Proto-Germanic *maidijaną (“to change; damage; cripple; injure; make mad”), from Proto-Germanic *maidaz ("weak; crippled"; compare Old English gemād (“silly, mad”), Old High German gimeit (“foolish, crazy”), literary German gemeit (“mad, insane”), Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐌼𐌰𐌹𐌸𐍃 (gamaiþs, “crippled”)), from Proto-Indo-European *mey- ("to change"; compare Old Irish máel (“bald, dull”), Old Lithuanian ap-maitinti (“to wound”), Sanskrit मेथति (méthati, “he hurts, comes to blows”)).

adv/ˈmæd//ˈmæːd/Australia, Southern-England/ˈmaːd/Northumbria/ˈmɛə̯d/
  1. Intensifier; to a large degree; extremely; exceedingly; very; unbelievably.

    Ireland · New-York · UK · dialectal · not-comparable · slang
    He was driving mad slow.
    It's mad hot today.
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱe? Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm Proto-Germanic *ga- Proto-West Germanic *ga- Old English ġe- Proto-Indo-European *mey-? Proto-Indo-European *meyth₂- Proto-Indo-European *moyth₂-éye-tider. Proto-Germanic *maidijanąder. Old English *mǣdan Old English ġemǣdan, ġemǣded Middle English mad English mad From Middle English mad, madde, madd, medd, from Old English ġemǣd, ġemǣded (“enraged”), past participle of ġemǣdan, *mǣdan (“to make insane or foolish”), from Proto-Germanic *maidijaną (“to change; damage; cripple; injure; make mad”), from Proto-Germanic *maidaz ("weak; crippled"; compare Old English gemād (“silly, mad”), Old High German gimeit (“foolish, crazy”), literary German gemeit (“mad, insane”), Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐌼𐌰𐌹𐌸𐍃 (gamaiþs, “crippled”)), from Proto-Indo-European *mey- ("to change"; compare Old Irish máel (“bald, dull”), Old Lithuanian ap-maitinti (“to wound”), Sanskrit मेथति (méthati, “he hurts, comes to blows”)).

verb/ˈmæd//ˈmæːd/Australia, Southern-England/ˈmaːd/Northumbria/ˈmɛə̯d/
  1. To be or become mad.

    intransitive · obsolete
  2. To madden, to anger, to frustrate.

    Jamaica · US · colloquial
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱe? Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm Proto-Germanic *ga- Proto-West Germanic *ga- Old English ġe- Proto-Indo-European *mey-? Proto-Indo-European *meyth₂- Proto-Indo-European *moyth₂-éye-tider. Proto-Germanic *maidijanąder. Old English *mǣdan Old English ġemǣdan, ġemǣded Middle English mad Proto-Indo-European *-o- Proto-Indo-European *-nom Proto-Indo-European *-onom Proto-Germanic *-aną Proto-Indo-European *-yeti Proto-Indo-European *-éyeti Proto-Germanic *-janą Old English -an Middle English -en Middle English madden English mad Inherited from Middle English madden. Compare Old English ġemǣdan.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.