Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) insane, crazy; obsessively in love (see cite 1904).

1891		Contemp. Review LX n.p.: Begging is called ‘battering for chewing;’ railway brakemen, ‘brakies; poorhouses, ‘pogies;’ prisons, ‘pens;’ liquor drinking, ‘rushing the growler;’ insanity, ‘bug-house,’ &c. &c. This slang is a very popular.
1899		J. Flynt Tramping with Tramps 238: She exclaimed suddenly: ‘Blokes, I’m bughouse.’ Asked what she meant, she said: ‘I’m losin’ me brain.’.
1901		Honolulu Republican (HI) 6 Sept. 8/3: My distant friend [...] clicked off the opinion that I ‘was bughouse’.
1904		St Paul Globe (MN) 7 Aug. 27/2: ‘She’s a Romeo rag-ga, ain’t ta it?’ [...] ‘Whose rag is she den? She’s his’n. Dey’s bughouse on each udder’.
1906		S. Ford Shorty McCabe 98: I couldn’t see the use of monkeyin’ with that bug-house boarder.
1907		C. M’Govern By Bolo and Krag 17: Talk of the fun you have in New York city [...] with that bug-house Raines law in full swing!
1914		Topeka State Jrnl (KS) 4 Feb. n.p.: They do not circulate reports designed to drive me ‘bug’.
1915		S. Ford Shorty McCabe on the Job 319: He’s only a batty nephew, that they keep under guard. Bughouse, you know.
1917		A. Conan Doyle His Last Bow in Baring-Gould (1968) II 798: ‘The man was mad.’ [...] ‘It’s enough to make a man bughouse when he has to play a part from mornin’ to night, with a hundred guys all ready to set the coppers wise to him.’.
1927		(con. WW1) P. MacDonald Patrol 198: ‘Buddoo in front; bloodthirsty bughouse wallah in the rea . . . Nice party we’re havin’’.
1927		Smith’s Wkly (Sydney) 20 Aug. 11/2: Slanguage [...] Cross out the incorrect: word or phrase in the following sentences: [...] ‘Hamlet was bughouse (barmy)’.
1929		C. McKay Banjo 6: He was bughouse and he delighted in the name of Bugsy.
1930		E. Hemingway letter c.15 Dec. in Baker Sel. Letters (1981) 336: What gets you bughouse is to lie awake all night with nothing to think about but how old Max [...] had double-crossed you.
1948		H. McCoy Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye in Four Novels (1983) 146: Doc Green’ll cross you up in a minute [...] He’s bug-house.
1955		R. Bissell High Water 79: A bughouse Hamlet is an old boy who is all the time reciting Shakespeare.
1979		B. Gutcheon New Girls (1982) 135: She didn’t think Miss Purse was completely bughouse.
1986		S. King It (1987) 701: I got a lot wrong with me, but I’m not bughouse.
2005		J. Stahl I, Fatty 235: She was a bughouse slut!
2023		(con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 192: I was bughouse.