madhouse
/ˈmædˌhaʊs/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.69 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
2
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A chaotic, uproarious, noisy place.
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "He is almost a tourist of his own book. There is a hint of the fad a couple of centuries ago for visiting madhouses in search of the exotic."
- "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."
Etymology
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈmædˌhaʊs/