MADHOUSE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Madhouse

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/mˈædhˌaʊs/ Listen

noun

Madhouse n.

An house or institution where insane persons are confined; an insane asylum; a bedlam; usually used in a deprecatory sense.

Synonyms: Bedlam, booby hatch, crazy house, cuckoo's nest, funny farm, funny house, insane asylum, loony bin, nuthouse, sanatorium.

Hence: (fig.) A chaotic, raucus or highly disordered situation.

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Etymology of 'Madhouse'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Madhouse" Quotes from Famous Books

... prevail upon me to touch it! But you—you have touched it—and you know the penalty! You raise forces of evil that have lain dormant for ages and dare to wield them. Beware! I know of some whom you have murdered; I cannot know how many you have sent to the madhouse. But I swear that in future your victims shall be few. There is a way ...

— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer

... a madhouse," Handley complained. "How we're going to get any of these students to keep their minds ...

— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper

... The madhouse scenes have been picked out by certain disinterested gentlemen, who keep private asylums, and periodicals to puff them; and have been met with bold denials of public facts, and with timid personalities, and a little easy cant about Sensation* Novelists; but in reality those passages ...

— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... do? The boy believes himself a great criminal. Do you not see at once, that, if we permit him to confess his crime, he will insist upon taking himself out of our keeping,—commit suicide, get himself sent to the madhouse, or anyhow lose our care and our soothing influence? We cannot relieve him until we restore his strength and composure. All we can do now is to watch him, soothe him, and by all means stave off this confession until he is stronger. It would kill ...

— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... myself that if it was "only" a neurosis it was one with great possibilities. The fact that collapses are frequent among brain-workers was not easily dismissed from my mind. I feared insanity and began to picture how I would disport myself in a madhouse. It seemed that I could not carry out the medical advice to take vigorous exercise, as it gave me palpitation and made me fear that my heart would go out ...

— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs

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