| / English Dictionary |
INSANITY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Relatively permanent disorder of the mind
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("insanity" is a kind of...):
mental disease; mental illness; psychopathy (any disease of the mind; the psychological state of someone who has emotional or behavioral problems serious enough to require psychiatric intervention)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "insanity"):
insaneness; lunacy; madness (obsolete terms for legal insanity)
dementedness; dementia (mental deterioration of organic or functional origin)
irrationality; unreason (the state of being irrational; lacking powers of understanding)
derangement; mental unsoundness; unbalance (a state of mental disturbance and disorientation)
craziness; daftness; flakiness (informal terms for insanity)
Antonym:
sanity (normal or sound powers of mind)
Derivation:
insane (afflicted with or characteristic of mental derangement)
Context examples:
This was raving insanity.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
As the night advanced, a fierce wind arose from the woods and quickly dispersed the clouds that had loitered in the heavens; the blast tore along like a mighty avalanche and produced a kind of insanity in my spirits that burst all bounds of reason and reflection.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
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