madhouse
Americannoun
-
a hospital for the confinement and treatment of mentally disturbed persons.
-
a wild, confused, and often noisy place, set of circumstances, etc..
The office was a madhouse today.
- Synonyms:
- bedlam
noun
-
a mental hospital or asylum
-
a state of uproar or confusion
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of madhouse
Explanation
A madhouse is an old fashioned and derogatory word for a psychiatric hospital. It was once quite common to talk about mentally ill people being sent to the madhouse, but that would be offensive today. While the many terms for psychiatric hospital (or the archaic insane asylum), including madhouse and funny farm or loony bin are no longer an acceptable way to talk about mental health care, most of them are commonly used to informally describe confused or chaotic situations. It would make sense to describe a roomful of eight year-olds running around and screaming happily as a madhouse, for example.
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:
The team was undecided on how well Mellencamp’s biggest hits—sepia-tinted odes to small-town America—fit today’s college football madhouse cathedrals.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 16, 2026
The follow-up continues this kookiness with a madhouse spoof of Hallmark holiday saccharine in which a woodpile becomes a homicidal monster.
From Salon ● Dec. 18, 2025
Lurking behind Foreman’s madhouse phantasmagorias is the mind of the artist interrogating its own secret chambers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 21, 2024
Mr Acciardo described the scene as a "madhouse" when first responders arrived.
From BBC ● Sep. 9, 2024
After my dad pushed through the media madhouse outside, he and my mom whispered in the hallway for a bit.
From "Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet" by Joanne Proulx
The burnt-orange and Sooner-red halves of the Cotton Bowl had alternated as madhouses.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 9, 2021
“The incarceration of freethinking healthy people in madhouses is spiritual murder,” he said.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 17, 2018
It would be a total madhouse but, remembering the previous total madhouses, you could go: OK, we just have to hold out for another 15 minutes and it will recede.
From Slate ● Jan. 7, 2013
Dadd spent the last 40 years of his life in madhouses, dying all but forgotten in Broadmoor in 1886.
From Time Magazine Archive
In my humble opinion, all private madhouses should be suppressed at once, and it should be no less than felony to confine any person under pretence of madness without due authority.
From Augusta Triumphans Or, the Way to Make London the Most Flourishing City in the Universe by Defoe, Daniel
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.
