the.com/madness
the line society draws and then keeps quietly redrawing every generation.
means A state of severe mental disturbance or irrationality; by extension, wild folly or chaotic behavior.
from From "mad," which traces back to Old English "gemǣded," meaning "made insane" — a past participle of a verb related to "gemād," "foolish, mad." These connect to a Proto-Germanic root "maidjaną," "to change, spoil, injure," with possible cousins meaning "crippled" or "changed for the worse." So the oldest sense isn't fury but alteration — a mind shifted off its expected shape. The "-ness" suffix simply turns the adjective into a state, the way "sad" becomes "sadness."
- old diagnosis
- Drapetomania labeled escaping slavery a mental illness
- shifting list
- Homosexuality was classified a disorder until 1973
- word origin
- Mad once just meant changed or transformed
- lunar myth
- Lunatic comes from luna, blamed on the moon
- genius link
- Studies tie creativity to higher mood-disorder rates
ncaa march madness — annual college basketball tournament with 68 teams competing for national championship since 1939
mad cow disease — bovine spongiform encephalopathy that killed 178,000 cattle in uk between 1986-2001