MADHOUSE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does madhouse mean? 

• MADHOUSE (noun)
  The noun MADHOUSE has 1 sense:

1. pejorative terms for an insane asylum

  Familiarity information: MADHOUSE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MADHOUSE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Pejorative terms for an insane asylum

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

Bedlam; booby hatch; crazy house; cuckoo's nest; funny farm; funny house; loony bin; madhouse; nut house; nuthouse; sanatorium; snake pit

Hypernyms ("madhouse" is a kind of...):

asylum; insane asylum; institution; mental home; mental hospital; mental institution; psychiatric hospital (a hospital for mentally incompetent or unbalanced person)

 Context examples 

I opened the window and signed to the man not to notice, so he contented himself after looking the place over and making up his mind as to what kind of a place he had got to by saying: 'Lor' bless yer, sir, I wouldn't mind what was said to me in a bloomin' madhouse.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

They lived strange lives, these men, and they died strange deaths—some by their own hands, some as beggars, some in a debtor’s gaol, some, like the most brilliant of them all, in a madhouse in a foreign land.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)