DELIRIUM

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A usually brief state of excitement and mental confusion often accompanied by hallucinations

Classified under:

Hypernyms ("delirium" is a kind of...):

disturbance; folie; mental disorder; mental disturbance; psychological disorder ((psychiatry) a psychological disorder of thought or emotion; a more neutral term than mental illness)

Sense 2

Meaning:

State of violent mental agitation

Synonyms:

craze; delirium; frenzy; fury; hysteria

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Hypernyms ("delirium" is a kind of...):

mania; manic disorder (a mood disorder; an affective disorder in which the victim tends to respond excessively and sometimes violently)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "delirium"):

nympholepsy (a frenzy of emotion; as for something unattainable)

epidemic hysertia; mass hysteria (a condition in which a large group of people exhibit the same state of violent mental agitation)

Derivation:

delirious (marked by uncontrolled excitement or emotion)

delirious (experiencing delirium)

Credits

Context examples:

He got delirium on Toosday, and has been ragin' like a devil ever since.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Now, said he, that little space was given to delirium and delusion.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

That I was lost in blissful delirium.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He has had some fearful shock—so says our doctor—and in his delirium his ravings have been dreadful; of wolves and poison and blood; of ghosts and demons; and I fear to say of what.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Symptoms include central nervous system impairment such as as delirium with prominent symptoms of personality change, cognitive dysfunction, disorientation, incoherent speech, and psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions, smooth muscle hypotonicity, and altered cardiovascular function.

(Hypercalcemia of Malignancy, NCI Thesaurus)

With a transport of glee, I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow; and it was not till weariness had begun to succeed, that I was suddenly, in the top fit of my delirium, struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

For two months Alleyne had wavered betwixt death and life, with a broken rib and a shattered head; yet youth and strength and a cleanly life were all upon his side, and he awoke from his long delirium to find that the war was over, that the Spaniards and their allies had been crushed at Navaretta, and that the prince had himself heard the tale of his ride for succor and had come in person to his bedside to touch his shoulder with his sword and to insure that so brave and true a man should die, if he could not live, within the order of chivalry.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It is allowed, that senates and great councils are often troubled with redundant, ebullient, and other peccant humours; with many diseases of the head, and more of the heart; with strong convulsions, with grievous contractions of the nerves and sinews in both hands, but especially the right; with spleen, flatus, vertigos, and deliriums; with scrofulous tumours, full of fetid purulent matter; with sour frothy ructations: with canine appetites, and crudeness of digestion, besides many others, needless to mention.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Causes of delirium include medications, poisoning, serious illnesses or infections, and severe pain.

(Delirium, NIH)

It would be likely to recur to a man in a delirium.