mad

adj

Etymology: 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 hurts, comes to blows”)).

1. Insane; crazy, mentally deranged.

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

   “He's got this mad idea that he's irresistible to women.”

2. Angry, annoyed.

   “Are you mad at me?”

   “And I punished them oft in euery Synagogue, and compelled them to blaspheme, and being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted them euen vnto strange cities.”

3. Used litotically to indicate satisfaction or approval.

   “Wow, you really made this pie from scratch? I'm not mad at it.”

   “I'm not mad at this little house, though.”

4. Bizarre; incredible.

   “It's mad that I got that job back a day after being fired.”

5. Wildly confused or excited.

   “to be mad with terror, lust, or hatred”

   “It is the land of graven images, and they are mad upon their idols.”

6. Extremely foolish or unwise; irrational; imprudent.
7. Extremely enthusiastic about; crazy about; infatuated with; overcome with desire for.

   “Aren't you just mad for that red dress?”

   “My wife is soccer-mad.”

8. Abnormally ferocious or furious; or, rabid, affected with rabies.

   “a mad dog”

9. Intensifier, signifying abundance or high quality of a thing; very, much or many.

   “I gotta give you mad props for scoring us those tickets. Their lead guitarist has mad skills. There are always mad girls at those parties.”

10. Having impaired polarity.

adv

Etymology: 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 hurts, comes to blows”)).

1. Intensifier; to a large degree; extremely; exceedingly; very; unbelievably.

   “He was driving mad slow.”

   “It's mad hot today.”

name

1. Acronym of Michigan algorithm decoder, a programming language, a variant of ALGOL, developed in 1959 at the University of Michigan.

noun

1. Initialism of mutual assured destruction or mutually assured destruction.

   “[T]he only bombs anyone dropped—on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—were Uncle Sam's message to non-nuclear Japan. MAD was salvation. MAD was security. MAD was the way of life most of us grew up with, the prevailing logic of uneasy peace. So whatever became of our mad, mad world?”

   “But the American government worries that MAD-style deterrence will no longer work. Terrorists, for example, might not care about the threat of destruction.”

2. Initialism of magnetic anomaly detector.
3. Initialism of mothers against decapentaplegic.
4. Acronym of magnetically-arrested disc, a type of black hole accretion disc).
5. Initialism of mandibular advancement device.

verb

Etymology: From Middle English madden, from the adjective; compare Old English ġemǣdan.

1. To be or become mad.

   “The imperial Elizabetta gazed with surprise at the youthful and unpretending appearance of the little being that had set the world madding.”

2. To madden, to anger, to frustrate.

   “This musick mads me, let it sound no more.”

   “He that mads others, if he were so humoured, would be as mad himself, as much grieved and tormented […].”