madhouse

[ mad-hous ]
See synonyms for madhouse on Thesaurus.com
noun,plural mad·hous·es [mad-hou-ziz]. /ˈmædˌhaʊ zɪz/.
  1. a hospital for the confinement and treatment of mentally disturbed persons.

  2. a wild, confused, and often noisy place, set of circumstances, etc.: The office was a madhouse today.

Origin of madhouse

1
First recorded in 1680–90; mad + house

Other words for madhouse

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use madhouse in a sentence

  • Still, federal prisons are almost always preferable to the madhouses that overcrowded state-run facilities have become.

    Bernie Will Be Prison Royalty | Mansfield Frazier | January 7, 2009 | THE DAILY BEAST
  • “Mad as hatters,” it said, merely because they had shot themselves, or died in the madhouses to which it had driven them!

    Gray youth | Oliver Onions
  • And of those other sad cases—dead, yet living—who people the madhouses and asylums, what of them?

    The Physical Life of Woman: | Dr. George H Napheys
  • A large proportion of the inmates of our madhouses are the victims of ardent spirit.

    Select Temperance Tracts | American Tract Society
  • The earliest "centrals" reminded most persons of madhouses, for the day of the polite, soft-spoken telephone girl had not arrived.

    The Age of Big Business | Burton J. Hendrick

British Dictionary definitions for madhouse

madhouse

/ (ˈmædˌhaʊs) /


nouninformal
  1. a mental hospital or asylum

  2. a state of uproar or confusion

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012