Library / English Dictionary

INSANITY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Relatively permanent disorder of the mind

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Hypernyms ("insanity" is a kind of...):

mental disease; mental illness; psychopathy (any disease of the mind; the psychological state of someone who has emotional or behavioral problems serious enough to require psychiatric intervention)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "insanity"):

insaneness; lunacy; madness (obsolete terms for legal insanity)

dementedness; dementia (mental deterioration of organic or functional origin)

irrationality; unreason (the state of being irrational; lacking powers of understanding)

derangement; mental unsoundness; unbalance (a state of mental disturbance and disorientation)

craziness; daftness; flakiness (informal terms for insanity)

Antonym:

sanity (normal or sound powers of mind)

Derivation:

insane (afflicted with or characteristic of mental derangement)

Credits

 Context examples: 

This was raving insanity.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

As the night advanced, a fierce wind arose from the woods and quickly dispersed the clouds that had loitered in the heavens; the blast tore along like a mighty avalanche and produced a kind of insanity in my spirits that burst all bounds of reason and reflection.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)