| English Dictionary |
MANIAC
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Dictionary entry overview: What does maniac mean?
• MANIAC (noun)
The noun MANIAC has 2 senses:
1. an insane person
2. a person who has an obsession with or excessive enthusiasm for something
Familiarity information: MANIAC used as a noun is rare.
• MANIAC (adjective)
The adjective MANIAC has 1 sense:
1. wildly disordered
Familiarity information: MANIAC used as an adjective is very rare.
Dictionary entry details
Sense 1
Meaning:
An insane person
Classified under:
Nouns denoting people
Synonyms:
Hypernyms ("maniac" is a kind of...):
diseased person; sick person; sufferer (a person suffering from an illness)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "maniac"):
crazy; looney; loony; nutcase; weirdo (someone deranged and possibly dangerous)
bedlamite (an archaic term for a lunatic)
pyromaniac (a person with a mania for setting things on fire)
madwoman (a woman lunatic)
Derivation:
maniacal (wildly disordered)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A person who has an obsession with or excessive enthusiasm for something
Classified under:
Nouns denoting people
Hypernyms ("maniac" is a kind of...):
enthusiast; fancier (a person having a strong liking for something)
Derivation:
maniac (wildly disordered)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Wildly disordered
Synonyms:
maniac; maniacal
Context example:
a maniacal frenzy
Similar:
insane (afflicted with or characteristic of mental derangement)
Derivation:
maniac (a person who has an obsession with or excessive enthusiasm for something)
Context examples
In fact, he had a comfortable feeling that he was vastly superior to these wordy maniacs of the working class.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
For a wife I have but the maniac upstairs: as well might you refer me to some corpse in yonder churchyard.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
The man is an undeveloped homicidal maniac.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
The doctor most kindly took charge of me, and it was well he did so, for I had a fit in the station, and before we reached home I was practically a raving maniac.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The maniac bellowed: she parted her shaggy locks from her visage, and gazed wildly at her visitors.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
The thought that has been buzzing about my brain lately is complete, and the theory proved. My homicidal maniac is of a peculiar kind.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
You may take the maniac with you to England; confine her with due attendance and precautions at Thornfield: then travel yourself to what clime you will, and form what new tie you like.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
I shall have to invent a new classification for him, and call him a zoöphagous (life-eating) maniac; what he desires is to absorb as many lives as he can, and he has laid himself out to achieve it in a cumulative way.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations!
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
I charged them to conceal from you, before I ever saw you, all knowledge of the curse of the place; merely because I feared Adele never would have a governess to stay if she knew with what inmate she was housed, and my plans would not permit me to remove the maniac elsewhere—though I possess an old house, Ferndean Manor, even more retired and hidden than this, where I could have lodged her safely enough, had not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation, in the heart of a wood, made my conscience recoil from the arrangement.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
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