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MADMAN
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
An insane person
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("madman" is a kind of...):
diseased person; sick person; sufferer (a person suffering from an illness)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "madman"):
crazy; looney; loony; nutcase; weirdo (someone deranged and possibly dangerous)
bedlamite (an archaic term for a lunatic)
pyromaniac (a person with a mania for setting things on fire)
madwoman (a woman lunatic)
Context examples:
“Holmes,” said I as I stood one morning in our bow-window looking down the street, “here is a madman coming along. It seems rather sad that his relatives should allow him to come out alone.”
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Silver hobbled, grunting, on his crutch; his nostrils stood out and quivered; he cursed like a madman when the flies settled on his hot and shiny countenance; he plucked furiously at the line that held me to him and from time to time turned his eyes upon me with a deadly look.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
And there are people who know so little as to think that madmen do not argue.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
Remember, I am not recording the vision of a madman.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
He swore like a madman and jabbed at me with an oar, for he must have seen death in my eyes.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The boat’s bow plunged under a crest, and we came through quarter-full of water. I bailed like a madman.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
Madman that I was to linger so long before I fled!
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Well, gentlemen, I was standing with her just inside the window, in all innocence, as God is my judge, when he rushed like a madman into the room, called her the vilest name that a man could use to a woman, and welted her across the face with the stick he had in his hand.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
You tell not your madmen what you do nor why you do it; you tell them not what you think.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
A thousand times rather would I have confessed myself guilty of the crime ascribed to Justine, but I was absent when it was committed, and such a declaration would have been considered as the ravings of a madman and would not have exculpated her who suffered through me.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
