derange
Americanverb (used with object)
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deranges,
present (3rd person singular)
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deranged,
past participle, past
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deranging
present participle
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to throw into disorder; disarrange.
-
to disturb the condition, action, or function of.
-
to make insane.
verb
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to disturb the order or arrangement of; throw into disorder; disarrange
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to disturb the action or operation of
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to make insane; drive mad
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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derangesimple
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derangessimple
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have derangedperfect
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has derangedperfect
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am derangingprogressive
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are derangingprogressive
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is derangingprogressive
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have been derangingperfect progressive
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has been derangingperfect progressive
Past
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derangedsimple
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had derangedperfect
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was derangingprogressive
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were derangingprogressive
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had been derangingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of derange
1770–80; < French déranger, Old French desrengier, equivalent to des- dis- 1 + rengier; see range
Explanation
To derange someone is to make her go crazy or completely confuse her. Going without sleep for an entire week can derange a person. It's more common to see the adjective deranged — or insane — than the verb derange, but you can use it to describe what happens when someone or something drives a person batty. Too many head injuries can derange a football player's short term memory, and a teasing cat just out of reach might derange a tied-up dog in a yard. The Old French root of derange is desrengier, "throw into disorder," which combines des, "do the opposite of" and rengier, "put into line."
Vocabulary lists containing derange
The Bluest Eye
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Stories of Ourselves
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A Game of Thrones
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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:
After all, the original Surrealist movement, with its urge to systematically derange the senses, occurred in the wake of the First World War and its horrors.
From New York Times ● Feb. 16, 2022
Tolentino explores these overheated environments and their incentives, and how they derange our sense of ourselves and our values.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 9, 2019
And yet neighbors living in democracies can derange themselves, too.
From The New Yorker ● Oct. 31, 2016
Twin Peaks didn’t break the rules of dramatic television so much as subtly derange them.
From Slate ● Nov. 12, 2015
The quality of her clothes threatened to derange Frieda and me.
From "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison
Some chess dramas show the game as destructive, a pursuit that deranges its disciples.
From New York Times ● Oct. 16, 2020
One shot in particular briefly references, and deranges, the Star Child sequence from “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 10, 2018
Then again, a whole sequence in which Dreyfuss builds his dream peak in the living room from mud and shrubbery is so forced and silly it nearly deranges all the rest of the movie.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 31, 2017
There are two good reasons for its abolition: it infantilises us, and, in turn, it deranges the royals.
From The Guardian ● May 29, 2012
Ice cream soda, too, deranges the stomach and creates all sorts of disagreeable disturbances.
From The Woman Beautiful or, The Art of Beauty Culture by Helen Follett Stevans
The US president at one point claimed the pool had been targeted by "sick, deranged" vandals, and was "given a 300 foot long gash" by a blade.
From BBC ● Aug. 1, 2026
You make that kind of desperate, deranged threat only if things aren’t going your way.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 13, 2026
Reviewing the off-Broadway production, our critic praised it as “a freewheeling, not to say completely deranged, spoof.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 12, 2026
Wineman isn’t afraid to spelunk truly deranged depths, but what’s remarkable is how much style he incorporates into the film’s most outré moments.
From Salon ● Apr. 5, 2026
Certainly, to any observers, I must have looked deranged.
From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros
So much so, in fact, that John Wherry, director of the Penn Medicine Immune Health Institute, summed it up this way to Kaiser Health News: “COVID is deranging the immune system.”
From Slate ● Jan. 31, 2023
Because he’s never put himself out there like this, and it’s deranging him because he’s a highly emotional person.
From The Verge ● Apr. 15, 2022
"Covid is deranging the immune system," said John Wherry, director of the Penn Medicine Immune Health Institute and another co-author of the January study.
From Salon ● Mar. 8, 2021
The New Yorker staff writer delivers an essay collection exploring the myriad modern-day forces deranging us, our ideas and our cultural values.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 19, 2019
All are perfectly clear that these horrid restrictions Are the proximate cause of our present afflictions, Obstructing the bowels, as 'twere, of the nation, And entirely deranging our whole circulation.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 by Various
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.
