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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
insanity
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
defense
▪ The judge will quiz jurors individually about their views on abortion and the insanity defense beginning Tuesday.
■ VERB
plead
▪ He attempted to plead insanity, but did it so effectively that they concluded he must be sane.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
plead ignorance/illness/insanity etc
▪ As to his reference to rugby league, I plead ignorance and will not interfere with private griefs.
▪ Galileo pleaded ignorance of any such document and promised to produce that signed by Bellarrnine in 1616.
▪ He attempted to plead insanity, but did it so effectively that they concluded he must be sane.
▪ In Seville he had often pleaded ignorance over some of the expressions she used.
▪ The next day, she stayed home from work, something she rarely did, pleading illness.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Brennan blames her actions on temporary insanity.
▪ Hearing voices inside your head is a common symptom of insanity.
▪ Hodge was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
▪ It was sheer insanity to try to drive through the mountains in that thunderstorm.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Insanity

Insanity \In*san"i*ty\, n. [L. insanitas unsoundness; cf. insania insanity, F. insanite.]

  1. The state of being insane; unsoundness or derangement of mind; madness; lunacy.

    All power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity.
    --Johnson.

    Without grace The heart's insanity admits no cure.
    --Cowper.

  2. (Law) Such a mental condition, as, either from the existence of delusions, or from incapacity to distinguish between right and wrong, with regard to any matter under action, does away with individual responsibility.

    Syn: Insanity, Lunacy, Madness, Derangement, Alienation, Aberration, Mania, Delirium, Frenzy, Monomania, Dementia.

    Usage: Insanity is the generic term for all such diseases; lunacy has now an equal extent of meaning, though once used to denote periodical insanity; madness has the same extent, though originally referring to the rage created by the disease; derangement, alienation, are popular terms for insanity; delirium, mania, and frenzy denote excited states of the disease; dementia denotes the loss of mental power by this means; monomania is insanity upon a single subject.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
insanity

1580s, "state of being insane," from Latin insanitatem (nominative insanitas) "unhealthfulness," noun of quality from insanus (see insane). Meaning "extreme folly" is from 1844.

Wiktionary
insanity

n. The state of being insane; madness.

WordNet
insanity

n. relatively permanent disorder of the mind [ant: sanity]

Wikipedia
Insanity

Insanity, craziness, or madness is a spectrum of behaviors characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Insanity may manifest as violations of societal norms, including a person becoming a danger to themselves or others, though not all such acts are considered insanity; likewise, not all acts showing indifference toward societal norms are acts of insanity. In modern usage, insanity is most commonly encountered as an informal unscientific term denoting mental instability, or in the narrow legal context of the insanity defense. In the medical profession the term is now avoided in favor of diagnoses of specific psychiatric diseases; the presence of delusions or hallucinations is broadly referred to as psychosis. When discussing psychiatric illness in general terms, " psychopathology" is considered a preferred descriptor.

In English, the word "sane" derives from the Latin adjective sanus meaning "healthy". Juvenal's phrase mens sana in corpore sano is often translated to mean a "healthy mind in a healthy body". From this perspective, insanity can be considered as poor health of the mind, not necessarily of the brain as an organ (although that can affect mental health), but rather refers to defective function of mental processes such as reasoning. Another Latin phrase related to our current concept of sanity is " compos mentis" (lit. "sound of mind"), and a euphemistic term for insanity is "non compos mentis". In law, mens rea means having had criminal intent, or a guilty mind, when the act ( actus reus) was committed.

A more informal use of the term insanity is to denote something considered highly unique, passionate or extreme, including in a positive sense. The term may also be used as an attempt to discredit or criticise particular ideas, beliefs, principles, desires, personal feelings, attitudes, or their proponents, such as in politics and religion.

Insanity (album)

Insanity is the second full-length studio album from melodic death metal band Darkane, released on March 6, 2001. It is the first Darkane album with Andreas Sydow in the band. The Album's Name came from the Chaotic Events that happened while Recording the album such as a Storm that caused a Power Outage. "Calamitas" is latin for, loss.

Insanity (song)

"Insanity" is a song written by Peter Mansson, Patric Sarin, Darin Zanyar and recorded by Swedish singer Darin. It was released as the fourth single from Darin's third studio record Break the News, though it was the first release from the album in Germany and selected other European countries.

Insanity (disambiguation)

Insanity is a spectrum of behaviors characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns.

Insanity may also refer to:

  • Insanity (album), an album by Darkane
  • "Insanity" (song), a song by Darin Zanyar
  • "Insanity", a song by Oingo Boingo from the 1994 album Boingo
  • Insanity (radio), a community radio station based at Royal Holloway, University of London
  • Insanity (Home exercise system), a workout regimen offered by Beachbody
  • Insanity (film), a 2015 Chinese-Hong Kong film
Insanity (film)

Insanity is a 2015 Hong Kong-Chinese psychological thriller film directed by David Lee and starring Sean Lau and Huang Xiaoming. It was released on April 2, 2015 in Hong Kong and a day later in China on April 3, 2015.

Usage examples of "insanity".

The same may be said of feigned insanity, aphonia, deaf-mutism, and loss of memory.

Gift from UpstairsGod, the irreverent insanity down here, after a lifetime ase, and the politics, and the Movement.

But if during the interval of lucidity they manifest no desire to receive Baptism, they should not be baptized while in a state of insanity.

And when they left for Bodach, he would go along with them, claiming that it would be insanity for them to refuse his help in such a place, and that they owed him at least that much for having come to their aid.

Her insanity had grown more virulent throughout the treatment and, despairing, Brock had eventually stopped them.

Both Fassola and Torrotti say that Tabachetti had just begun to work on this chapel when he lost his reason, but as the work is described as complete in the 1586 edition of Caccia, it is evident, as I have already shown, that his insanity was only temporary, inasmuch as he did another chapel after 1590.

Her heart pounding heavily in her breast, she cowded closer and told herself this was crazy, sheer insanity.

And with that decision she put her ductless glands in a grand alliance with her insanity.

In the encounter between those two embattled enemies had lurked an intensity of passion which he could not understand, which seemed strangely akin to insanity itself.

Colors he applied with his fingers and thumbs, scooping them out of tubs until he suffered from lead encephalopathy, leading to deafness, depression, and insanity.

Galen down to the present day, about the pernicious influence of this enervating indulgence, and its strong propensity to generate the very worst and most formidable kinds of insanity.

Statistics show that insanity is increasing with alarming rapidity everywhere, yet medical experts differ widely as to the causes of mental deterioration, and science is not yet in possession of knowledge of the exact etiology of functional insanity.

Since insanity is chiefly a manifestation of mental or psychological disturbance-a Psychic neurosis-the symptomatology therefore should offer a guidance in ascertaining the etiology, and assist as well in arriving at a solution of the 14 mental pathology.

The common type of insanity which is characterized by mild hallucinations is of less concern from a eugenic point of view.

As they raced out from under the overhanging ice the rope ladder scraped alongside and Findhorn, in a moment of pure insanity, leaped at it.