raving mad
7
7.2
- idiom
- Informal
:
loco de remate
- Listen to them, rather than immediately dismissing them as raving mad.
- go raving mad
And at the end of the film, he kills his own mother and he's totally raving mad.
- And at the end of the film, he kills his own mother and he's totally raving mad.
Examples
-
I would go stark raving mad being locked up in this bloody apartment by myself, honestly.
-
This woman is raving mad, Anne.
-
- She is really raving mad.
-
And he was raving mad.
-
I think I have just gone stark raving mad working by myself all day.
Blog text (1) -
He's gone stark raving mad!
-
Cutter is stark raving mad.
Fiction book (1992) -
She's stark, raving mad, but she's still alive.
-
She's stark raving mad—you see that, Janet, don't you?
Fiction book (1996) -
After weeks of isolation, I felt like I was going raving mad from boredom.
Synonyms
∞
4.1
Mentally ill and unable to think or behave in a normal way
355
4.2
Very uncontrolled in behavior and lacking control
234
3.3
Very foolish and not sensible
55
7.2
Being a little crazy in a funny or strange way
27
7.8
A person who is not thinking or acting in a normal and safe way
19
8.6
Very wild and out of control, seeming crazy
1
5.0
Acting in a wild and uncontrolled way
1
7.8
Very frightened or upset and not thinking clearly
1
8.0
Showing wild, irrational behavior
1
9.8
Acting or feeling very silly and not thinking clearly, often as a joke
Acting in a very strange and not sensible way
Acting or feeling very strange
Very silly or clearly crazy
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
Both components ('raving' = utterly irrational/crazed; 'mad' = mentally disturbed) directly contribute to an intensified meaning, so 'raving mad' is compositionally predictable as 'extremely/utterly mad'. This adjective + adjective/intensifier pattern is common across languages, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words will readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Raving mad comes from the old use of raving, which meant shouting or talking wildly and without control. Picture someone yelling and acting wild, and you can see why the phrase now means 'completely crazy'.