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drive someone crazy

Idioms  

  1. Also,; drive someone to drink. Greatly exasperate someone, annoy to distraction. For example, His habitual lateness drives me crazy, or Apologizing over and over drives me bananas, or These slovenly workmen drive me up the wall, or Your nagging is driving me to drink. All of these hyperbolic expressions describe a person's extreme frustration, supposedly to the point of insanity (crazy, mad, nuts, bonkers, and bananas all mean “insane”); up the wall alludes to climbing the walls to escape and to drink to imbibing alcohol to induce oblivion.

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.

It’s enough to drive someone crazy.

From Time

And if you repeat you have to drive someone crazy.

From New York Times

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.