INSANITY • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Insanity

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/ɪnsˈænəti/ /ɪnsˈænɪti/ Listen

noun

Insanity n.

The state of being insane; unsoundness or derangement of mind; madness; lunacy. "All power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity." "Without grace The heart's insanity admits no cure."

(Law) Such a mental condition, as, either from the existence of delusions, or from incapacity to distinguish between right and wrong, with regard to any matter under action, does away with individual responsibility.

Synonyms: Insanity, Lunacy, Madness, Derangement, Alienation, Aberration, Mania, Delirium, Frenzy, Monomania, Dementia. Insanity is the generic term for all such diseases; lunacy has now an equal extent of meaning, though once used to denote periodical insanity; madness has the same extent, though originally referring to the rage created by the disease; derangement, alienation, are popular terms for insanity; delirium, mania, and frenzy denote excited states of the disease; dementia denotes the loss of mental power by this means; monomania is insanity upon a single subject.

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Etymology of 'Insanity'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Insanity" Quotes from Famous Books

... among the Salisbury adherents. The men bawled, the women screamed, the boys shrieked, and all waved their hats and flags, and jumped up and down, and manifested symptoms of baseball insanity. ...

— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey

... he must be going mad, but insanity implied some definite delusion or hallucination, and, so far as he could make out, he had none. He was simply crushed by a nameless foreboding. Something dreadful was to happen, but this was all he felt; knowledge had no part in his condition. He could not say whether he slept during the two ...

— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells

... you talking about? Mother has lost her wits. Please do not be angry, your Excellency. She has a touch of insanity. Her mother ...

— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol

... restitution. She has, oh, she has become a kleptomaniac. With every luxury, with her fine home on the Lake Shore Drive, with all her father's wealth, with no want money can gratify, she takes things. In her circumstances it is out of the question to call it stealing. It is a mania, a form of insanity. When she is doing it, she seems to be in the grasp of some other mind, to be another person, and her actions are involuntary, unconscious. Then she seems to come to herself, when her agony ...

— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... World's Neglected or Forgotten Leaders and Pioneers Social Conditions—Expenses at Harvard; European Wages; India as a Wheat Producer; Increase of Insanity; Temperance; Flamboyant Animalism Transcendental Hash Just Criticism Progress of discovery and Improvement—Autotelegraphy; Edison's Phonograph; Type-setting Eclipsed; Printing in Colors; Steam Wagon; Fruit Preserving; Napoleon's Manuscript; Peace; Capital ...

— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various

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