madhouse

noun

Etymology: From mad + house.

1. A house where insane persons are confined; an insane asylum.

   “The palace, the night-cellar, the jail, the madhouse: the chambers of birth and death, of health and sickness, the rigid face of the corpse and the calm sleep of the child: midnight was upon them all.”

   “The king experienced his first attack in autumn 1788, and as his condition worsened and the physicians-in-ordinary proved unable to cope or cure, the Reverend Dr Francis Willis (1717–1807), a clergyman doctor who ran a madhouse in Lincolnshire, was called in.”

2. A chaotic, uproarious, noisy place.

   “This taut, soldierly, professional story is something of a stranger among American novels about war making. Angry civilians have writ ten most of the best fiction on the subject, from “Three Soldiers” through “Catch‐22,” to make the point (with a good deal of literary overkill) that wars are mass insanity and that armies are madhouses.”