mad

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Angry or annoyed.

   Are you still mad at me about yesterday?

2. 2
   adj

   Very foolish or unwise; crazy.

   You want to spend a thousand pounds on a pair of shoes? Are you mad?

3. 3
   adj

   Very enthusiastic about or fond of something.

   My little brother is mad about dinosaurs.

4. 4
   adj

   Having a serious mental illness.

   In the old story, grief slowly drove the king mad.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Mad is an Old English word that originally meant “insane.” By late Middle English it had also developed the sense “angry,” which remains standard in American English but has largely receded in British English; the sense “enthusiastic or passionate,” as in mad about something, is also medieval.

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…

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