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🏥 A mental hospital ♟️ A chess variant 🧑‍🦲 A crazy person 🤪 Wildly foolish
bughouse

bughouse

1 9.9
An offensive word for a person who seems mentally unwell or behaves very strangely
  • noun
  • /ˈbʌɡˌhaʊs/
  • Slur
translation icon : loco
  • The way she was laughing uncontrollably made everyone think she was bughouse.

Examples

  • Well, anyway, what I'm trying to say is the people nowadays are all bughouse.

    The Spirit of St. Louis (1957)

  • "You're bughouse!" exclaimed King VI.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • Many people believed he was bughouse after he started talking to himself in public.

  • He was acting so erratically that I began to worry he might be bughouse.

Synonyms

madman
vsbughouse
  • Offensive
95 6.4

A man who acts very strangely or dangerously and may be mentally ill

is an offensive term used for any person rather than only a man
nutcase
vsbughouse
  • Offensive
52 8.6

A person who behaves very strangely and may be dangerous

is a harsher insult focusing on mental instability rather than mild oddness
crank
vsbughouse
  • Offensive
29 7.7

A person who is often angry and has strange ideas

is harsher and targets mental instability rather than unusual opinions
total psycho
vsbughouse
  • Offensive
2 9.1

A person who acts in a very angry, dangerous, or unpredictable way

is an offensive term stressing mental instability rather than only extreme behaviour
nutcake
vsbughouse
  • Offensive
1 9.1

An insulting word for a person who acts very silly or strange

is more offensive highlighting serious instability rather than mere eccentricity

How Crazy

psycho
  • Slur
300 9.5
lunatic
  • Offensive
51 6.2
bughouse
  • Slur
1 9.9
oddball
  • Offensive
21 7.2
eccentric
1 7.0

Surface Forms

bughouse singular
bughouses plural

Morphology

bughouse = bug + house (opaque) = bug + house

The compound structure is clear, but the offensive meaning for a mentally unstable person is lexicalized and not predictable from the component meanings.

Etymology

Calling a person a bughouse comes from the same parts bug ('crazy') and house ('place') and so it was used to call someone mentally unstable. Today this use is insulting and hurtful, so it is considered offensive language.