DEMENTED

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does demented mean? 

• DEMENTED (adjective)
  The adjective DEMENTED has 1 sense:

1. affected with madness or insanity

  Familiarity information: DEMENTED used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DEMENTED (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Affected with madness or insanity

Synonyms:

brainsick; crazy; demented; disturbed; mad; sick; unbalanced; unhinged

Context example:

a man who had gone mad

Similar:

insane (afflicted with or characteristic of mental derangement)

Derivation:

dementedness (mental deterioration of organic or functional origin)

 Context examples 

During all this time Harrison lived half demented, expecting every hour to feel the hand of a Bow Street runner upon his collar, and to be tried for his life.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

An indirect pain assessment scale used by nurses and other professionals to evaluate level of pain/discomfort in demented or otherwise uncommunicative patients. (Kanner).

(Discomfort Scale for Patients with Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type, NCI Thesaurus)

The lake there is eight feet deep, and you can imagine our feelings when we saw that the trail of the poor demented girl came to an end at the edge of it.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

All three of them, the dead woman and the two demented men, retained upon their faces an expression of the utmost horror—a convulsion of terror which was dreadful to look upon.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But the whole effect is spoiled when I look at them—at Tetralani, five feet ten in her stocking feet and weighing a hundred and ninety pounds, and at Barillo, a scant five feet four, greasy-featured, with the chest of a squat, undersized blacksmith, and at the pair of them, attitudinizing, clasping their breasts, flinging their arms in the air like demented creatures in an asylum; and when I am expected to accept all this as the faithful illusion of a love-scene between a slender and beautiful princess and a handsome, romantic, young prince—why, I can't accept it, that's all.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)