Standard Lemma guide

madhouse

noun · 3 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot

Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.

Sound

Pronunciation

Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.

General-American: /ˈmædˌhaʊs/
Southern-England: Recorded audio is listed in the source snapshot.
CMU ARPABET: M AE1 D HH AW2 S Digits mark lexical stress: 1 primary, 2 secondary, 0 unstressed.

noun

Meaning 1

A house where insane persons are confined; an insane asylum.

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Usage: obsolete

No example sentence was provided for this meaning.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: insane asylum, mental hospital, bedlam, bin, booby-hatch, booby house, bughouse, crazy house, cuckoo's nest, funny farm, happy hotel, laughing academy, loony bin, lunatic asylum, madhouse, mental asylum, mental home, mental hotel, grippy sock vacation, mental health center, mental health hospital, mental institution, nutfarm, nuthouse, psych, psych hospital, psychiatric hospital, psychopathic hospital, psychiatric ward, psych ward, special hospital, Tanjung Rambutan, whack shack

Antonyms: none provided

noun

Meaning 2

A chaotic, uproarious, noisy place.

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Usage: broadly, figuratively

No example sentence was provided for this meaning.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

noun

Meaning 3

pejorative terms for an insane asylum

Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0

No example sentence was provided for this meaning.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: Bedlam, booby hatch, crazy house, cuckoo's nest, funny farm, funny house, loony bin, nut house, nuthouse, sanatorium, snake pit

Antonyms: none provided

Broader terms: mental hospital, psychiatric hospital, mental institution, institution, mental home, insane asylum, asylum

History

Etymology

From mad + house.

Across languages

Translations

58 source translations are retained for this English entry.

Azerbaijani: dəlixana — insane asylum
Bulgarian: лудница (ludnica) — insane asylum
Catalan: manicomi — insane asylum
Chinese Mandarin: 瘋人院 /疯人院 (fēngrényuàn) — insane asylum
Danish: galehus — insane asylum
Finnish: hullujenhuone — insane asylum
Galician: manicomio — insane asylum
German: Irrenhaus — insane asylum
German: Irrenanstalt — insane asylum
German: Klapsmühle — insane asylum
Greek: τρελάδικο (treládiko) — insane asylum
Greek: τρελοκομείο (trelokomeío) — insane asylum
Greek: μουρλοκομείο (mourlokomeío) — insane asylum
Ido: dementerio — insane asylum
Italian: manicomio — insane asylum
Macedonian: лудница (ludnica) — insane asylum
Malay: suaka gila — insane asylum
Norwegian Bokmål: galehus — insane asylum
Norwegian Nynorsk: galehus — insane asylum
Norwegian Nynorsk: galnehus — insane asylum
Polish: dom wariatów — insane asylum
Polish: psychiatryk — insane asylum
Polish: szpital psychiatryczny — insane asylum
Polish: wariatkowo — insane asylum
Portuguese: manicómio — insane asylum
Portuguese: manicômio — insane asylum
Punjabi: ਪਾਗਲਖਾਨਾ (pāglakhānā) — insane asylum
Russian: дурдом (durdom) — insane asylum
Serbo-Croatian: ludnica — insane asylum
Spanish: manicomio — insane asylum
Sranan Tongo: kolera — insane asylum
Swedish: dårhus — insane asylum
Turkish: delihane — insane asylum
Ukrainian: божеві́льня (boževílʹnja) — insane asylum
Unami: kpëcheònkëlëwikaon — insane asylum
Azerbaijani: dəlixana — place resembling an insane asylum
Catalan: manicomi — place resembling an insane asylum
Chinese Mandarin: 瘋人院 /疯人院 (fēngrényuàn) — place resembling an insane asylum
Danish: galehus — place resembling an insane asylum
Finnish: hullujenhuone — place resembling an insane asylum
Galician: manicomio — place resembling an insane asylum
German: Tollhaus — place resembling an insane asylum
Greek: τρελάδικο (treládiko) — place resembling an insane asylum
Greek: τρελοκομείο (trelokomeío) — place resembling an insane asylum
Greek: μουρλοκομείο (mourlokomeío) — place resembling an insane asylum
Italian: manicomio — place resembling an insane asylum
Italian: gabbia di matti — place resembling an insane asylum
Norwegian Bokmål: galehus — place resembling an insane asylum
Norwegian Nynorsk: galehus — place resembling an insane asylum
Norwegian Nynorsk: galnehus — place resembling an insane asylum
Polish: dom wariatów — place resembling an insane asylum
Polish: wariatkowo — place resembling an insane asylum
Portuguese: manicomio — place resembling an insane asylum
Romanian: balamuc — place resembling an insane asylum
Russian: дурдом (durdom) — place resembling an insane asylum
Spanish: manicomio — place resembling an insane asylum
Swedish: dårhus — place resembling an insane asylum
Turkish: delihane — place resembling an insane asylum

Word forms

Inflections and variants

madhouses — plural

Word family

Derived and related words

Derived: none provided

Related: none provided

Semantic map

Other relationships

Hypernyms: mental hospital, psychiatric hospital, mental institution, institution, mental home, insane asylum, asylum

Sources

Where this information comes from

Wiktionary data was expanded into structured fields by Wiktextract. Matching Princeton WordNet definitions and semantic relationships, plus CMUdict ARPABET pronunciations, are merged into this same canonical word page.

Wiktionary text is credited to English Wiktionary contributors under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The source entry and revision history URL, legal text, and the complete attribution and reuse instructions are collected on the site-wide Sources, credits & licenses page.

Changes made: Wiktionary markup was removed and matching senses were grouped; WordNet and CMUdict evidence was merged into the canonical word page. Source quotations with separate cited works are not republished.

The page is served entirely from a local, versioned copy; opening it makes no upstream request or external navigation.

Real reading context

Meaning relationships

Meaning relationships

Meaning relationships

madhouse in complete knowledge articles