lunacy
Americannoun
plural
lunacies-
insanity; mental disorder.
- Synonyms:
- aberration, mania, madness, craziness, dementia, derangement
- Antonyms:
- sanity, rationality
-
intermittent insanity, formerly believed to be related to phases of the moon.
- Antonyms:
- sanity, rationality
-
extreme foolishness or an instance of it.
Her decision to resign was sheer lunacy.
-
unsoundness of mind sufficient to incapacitate one for civil transactions: a former legal term.
noun
-
(formerly) any severe mental illness
-
foolishness or a foolish act
Etymology
Origin of lunacy
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.
“Bloodline” reminds me of the breed of darkly comic postwar novels by Robert Coover, William H. Gass, Harry Crews and others, in which regional manias stand in for a broader national lunacy.
Where “I Think You Should Leave” operates like a jukebox, “The Chair Company” is a concept album extrapolating a single sight gag into a swirl of lunacy on par with an extended free jazz performance.
From Salon
But to qualify for the genre itself—and satisfy the base demands of the base—a movie is required to both accelerate toward lunacy and entertain a certain amount of mayhem.
Is it hard, though, to freeze all the negativity and all the lunacy that has been directed at you?
From BBC
With a show like “And Just Like That,” faith in the series’ future is spun out of pure lunacy.
From Salon
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.