INSANITY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Insanity

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/ɪnsˈænəti/ /ɪnsˈænɪti/ Listen

noun

Insanity n.

The state of being insane; unsoundness or derangement of mind; madness; lunacy. "All power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity." "Without grace The heart's insanity admits no cure."

(Law) Such a mental condition, as, either from the existence of delusions, or from incapacity to distinguish between right and wrong, with regard to any matter under action, does away with individual responsibility.

Synonyms: Insanity, Lunacy, Madness, Derangement, Alienation, Aberration, Mania, Delirium, Frenzy, Monomania, Dementia. Insanity is the generic term for all such diseases; lunacy has now an equal extent of meaning, though once used to denote periodical insanity; madness has the same extent, though originally referring to the rage created by the disease; derangement, alienation, are popular terms for insanity; delirium, mania, and frenzy denote excited states of the disease; dementia denotes the loss of mental power by this means; monomania is insanity upon a single subject.

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Etymology of 'Insanity'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Insanity" Quotes from Famous Books

... physical discovery, as Newton's, remains to ninety-nine out of a hundred a mental miracle; but a great moral teacher "labours to make himself forgotten." When he begins to speak he is suspected of insanity; when he has won his way he receives a Royal Commission to appoint the judges; as a veteran he is shelved for platitude. So Horace is regarded as a mere jewelry store of the Latin, Bacon in his Essays, of the English, wisdom, which they each in fact helped to create. Carlyle's paradoxes ...

— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... Crest-Wave rarely passes from a race without leaving a wide trail of insanity in its wake. The life forces are strong; the human organisms through which they play are but—as we know them. Commonly these organisms are not directed by the Divine Soul, which has all too little of the direction of life in its hands; so the life-currents drift downward, instead of fountaining ...

— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... Faddists, eccentrics, dreamers, mystics, workers chained to lifelong slavery by their dominant idea, have poured out their plans to me. Sometimes visitors came who clearly had crossed the unguarded frontier between sanity and insanity, interesting and pathetic and clever, yet of the great order of God's fools. They were not unhappy, for their path was brilliantly lit by an idea, whilst the rest of the world was plunged in darkness. They would scold me and pity me because I refused ...

— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... towards her and endeavoured to grasp her hand. She shrunk from him with dread, for there was a glare in his eye, and a wildness in his look which suggested the horrible idea that he was attacked with insanity. She looked round with the intention of escaping from the cabin, when the door opened and Donna Julia entered. Hernan was calm in an instant, and bowing to the Spanish lady, he said in English—"Cousin, soothe that poor girl. The blow that I have ...

— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... not to miss any phase of his problem, Bjoernson also takes up briefly the illegitimate line of the Kurts, which, being unsupplied with any favorable environment, sinks deeper and deeper into the mire of vice. The inevitable result is insanity and ultimate extinction. Mrs. Rendalen's visit to the slums, and her recognition of the peculiar scream of her own son in a terrible little ragamuffin, is one of the most remarkable incidents ...

— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

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