lose one's mind

1. Also, lose one's reason. Go crazy, lose one's sanity, as in I thought she'd lost her mind when she said she was going ice-fishing, or That assignment is enough to make me lose my reason. The first expression dates from the late 1500s; the second employs reason in the sense of “unimpaired mental faculties,” a usage dating from the late 1300s. Also see under go out of one's mind; have all one's buttons.

Example Sentences

He paraphrased the United Negro College Fund’s tagline, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste,” as “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind.”

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Former Vice President Dan Quayle’s mangling of a United Negro College Fund advertising slogan, “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind,” has, perhaps mercifully, been dropped.

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This morsel from another man who might consider staying out of the sun on golf courses aptly describes our current stubborn and misguided leader: “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.”

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A mind is a terrible thing to waste," he lost himself in a self-indicting verbal fog: "What a waste it is to lose one's mind or not to have a mind.

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She leaned her head down on her father's shoulder and thought how sad it must be to lose one's mind.

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