mayhem
Americannoun
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Law. the crime of willfully inflicting a bodily injury on another so as to make the victim less capable of self-defense or, under modern statutes, so as to cripple or mutilate the victim.
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random or deliberate violence or damage.
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a state of rowdy disorder.
Antagonisms between the various factions at the meeting finally boiled over, and mayhem ensued.
noun
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law the wilful and unlawful infliction of injury upon a person, esp (formerly) the injuring or removing of a limb rendering him less capable of defending himself against attack
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any violent destruction or confusion
Etymology
Origin of mayhem
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English maheym, maim, from Anglo-French mahe(i)m, mahaim, from Germanic; akin to Middle High German meidem “gelding,” Old Norse meitha “to injure”; maim
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.
Forest's managerial mayhem comes after Nuno led them to an impressive seventh place finish in the Premier League last season.
From Barron's
Last Wednesday, TikTok creators, finding none of the mayhem they expected to see in Springfield, started suggesting that faith-based groups working with Haitian immigrants were misdirecting resources.
From Salon
You can see why, but a gambler would have gone with Van der Merwe in the hope that Scotland can create the kind of unstructured mayhem that could see him reborn.
From BBC
If the trilateral agreement turns into two bilateral ones, Hufbauer doesn’t expect economic mayhem.
From Barron's
"I've got to get back to London, get this mayhem out of the way," he laughed.
From BBC
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.
