delirium
Americannoun
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Pathology. a more or less temporary disorder of the mental faculties, as in fevers, disturbances of consciousness, or intoxication, characterized by restlessness, excitement, delusions, hallucinations, etc.
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a state of violent excitement or emotion.
noun
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a state of excitement and mental confusion, often accompanied by hallucinations, caused by high fever, poisoning, brain injury, etc
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violent excitement or emotion; frenzy
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of delirium
1590–1600; < Latin dēlīrium frenzy, equivalent to dēlīr ( āre ) ( see deliration) + -ium -ium
Explanation
Experiencing delirium? Then you're out of your mind and so excited you're hallucinating. Many things can cause delirium, including illness, high stress, and your team winning the World Series after 100 years of trying. Delirium means “madness” in Latin, and for good reason. Patients with high fevers or who suffer severe trauma might experience a state of delirium, full of mental confusion and maybe a little hysteria. And if you’ve ever stayed up all night writing a paper or working hard to meet some deadline, you’ve probably experienced moments of delirium, where you feel crazed and hallucinatory, fueled by sleep deprivation and too much coffee.
Vocabulary lists containing delirium
Their Eyes Were Watching God
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Unit 1: Telling Details
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"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
There was delirium when they took an early lead against Germany in their opening game, but it would end in humiliation as the European giants eventually stuck seven past them.
From BBC ● Jun. 21, 2026
In “Exit the King,” he confronts the insupportable reality of death with the same madcap delirium of his better known works, such as “The Bald Soprano,” “The Chairs” and “Rhinoceros.”
From Los Angeles Times ● May 13, 2026
The show once referenced a fast-food item, called the Ribwich, that drives Homer to delirium.
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 29, 2026
Those who’ve managed to come out of this new kind of tech-enabled delirium have learned how vital it is to stay in touch with the natural world and their natural instincts.
From Slate ● Feb. 2, 2026
Celia pieces together his story from the torments he relives in delirium, between fevers and chills and a painful catarrh.
From "Dreaming in Cuban" by Cristina García
The 4th century church father Jerome called them "deliria."
From Time Magazine Archive
If stupor be a psychobiological reaction, it should occur, occasionally, in organic conditions just as the deliria of typhoid fever may contain many psychogenic elements.
From Benign Stupors A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type by MacCurdy, John T. (John Thompson)
Pronounced mental disorder occurs rarely in tuberculosis, according to Ziehen, and leads either to melancholia or to hallucinatory states of excitement, resembling the deliria of exhaustion or inanition.
From The Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Volume 10 by Various
Before Breuer and Janet, the great psychiatrist Leuret expressed the opinion that even for the deliria of the insane, if we only understood how to interpret them, a meaning could be found.
From A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Freud, Sigmund
During Luther's life and afterwards I rejected these Stoic and Manichean deliria, when Luther and others wrote: All works, good and bad, in all men, good and bad, must occur as they do.
From Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church by Bente, F. (Friedrich)
Critics called the product’s most notable side effect “delirium” and warned that these deliriums could have catastrophic effects on children, the elderly, or the immunocompromised.
From Slate ● Aug. 28, 2021
Is this the book that launched a thousand quips, and stirred the orators to deliriums of denunciation?
From Time Magazine Archive
On the evening of the second day, the girl—the one who Goddard said was so important—came into his room in between deliriums.
From "Scythe" by Neal Shusterman
Kazan had listened to Pelliter’s deliriums many times since MacVeigh had left them alone, and soon he dropped his muzzle between his forepaws and dozed again.
From Isobel : a Romance of the Northern Trail by Curwood, James Oliver
Certain individuals pass in a few years from psychasthenic depression with doubts and obsessions to psychasthenic deliriums with stubbornness and negativism, then to asthenic insanity with irremediable and complete want of power.
From A Psychiatric Milestone Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 by New York Hospital. Society
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
