Green’s Dictionary of Slang

daffy adj.

also daffey
[SE daft]

1. eccentric, foolish; esp. in daffy about, daffy on, madly in love with; also as adv.

[US]C.L. Canfield Diary of a Forty-Niner (1906) 191: Jack has gone daffy.
[[UK]R. Lawson Upton-on-Severn Words 14: Daffy, simple, soft ].
[US]E. Townsend Chimmie Fadden Explains 49: Say, de whole house is daffey, only cept Miss Fannie and me. [Ibid.] 121: From his Whiskers t’ de Duchess dey is all bicycle daffy.
[US]H. Green Actors’ Boarding House (1906) 82: Them Johnny Bulls are daffy over it.
[US]S. Ford Shorty McCabe 186: A sure-enough live one, like Sadie [...] gettin’ daffy about any such overstuffed frankfurter as this specimen.
[Aus]Truth (Brisbane) 14 Oct. 7/3: There are men to-day who are BRILLIANT ON ONE SUBJECT, and what tho user of slang would term ‘daffy’ on another.
[US]Bisbee Dly Rev. (AZ) 23 Jan. 8/2: [advt] Decidely Dictionary Daffy. Bisbee has apparently gone ‘dictionary daffy’ [...] to secure copies of the beautiful $4.00 Webster’s New Illustrated Dictionary.
[US]H.G. van Campen ‘Our Theatrical Boarding House’ in L.A. Herald 10 Dec. 10/5: ‘You talk daffy’.
[US]S. Ford Shorty McCabe on the Job 24: That picture collection is what he’s daffy over.
[US]‘A-No. 1’ Snare of the Road 74: De white folks Ah just done tole yu about, hab gwine ’most daffy in der heads.
[US]Ethel Waters ‘Sugar’ 🎵 I get my taffy from sugar! / What’s more, I’m daffy ’bout sugar, / That sugar baby of mine!
[US]D. Runyon ‘Social Error’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 448: I do not blame Handsome Jack Maddigan for going daffy about her.
[US]H.A. Smith Life in a Putty Knife Factory (1948) 43: We were a daffy bunch.
[US]W. Winchell ‘On Broadway’ 2 Sept. [synd. col.] The girls at the boards here are going daffy.
[US]H.S. Thompson letter 18 Apr. in Proud Highway (1997) 507: I may be sick and a bit daffy, but something in me rebels at the idea of 500 or 5000 negroes [...] singing ‘I Love State Troopers in My Heart’.
[US]L. Rosten Dear ‘Herm’ 333: Her name is Daphne Hunziger and she is more daffy than Daphne.
[US]D. Woodrell Muscle for the Wing 8: A daffy man who oddly relished the orderliness of military jargon.
[UK]Observer 13 June 15: That daffy grin that in the Sixties meant ‘Hey, look at me, aren’t I cool, I’m smoking a spliff!’.
[US]E. Weiner Drop Dead, My Lovely (2005) 49: Give this daffy frail the gate.
[US]NY Times 6 Dec. 🌐 The main character was Daisy Gamble, a daffy young woman.
[UK]R. Milward Man-Eating Typewriter 4: My name will be on the oyster levers of every daffy jittery civvy.

2. (US) extremely keen.

[US]B. Fisher Mutt & Jeff 8 Oct. [synd. strip] Mutt Is Simply Daffy to Join a Fraternity at Harvard.

3. (US) mad with rage.

[US]B. Fisher Mutt & Jeff 21 Nov. [synd. strip] Jeff will be daffy when he hears I was in a box [i.e. at a horse show].

4. (Polari) drunk [but note daffy n.1 (1)].

[UK]P. Baker Fabulosa 291/1: daffy drunken.

In compounds

daffy chariot (n.)

(US) an ambulance for conveying the insane to hospital.

[US]O.O. McIntyre New York Day by Day 13 Mar. [synd. col.] If anybody told me that some day Copeland Townsend would [...] ask me in I would have run out and called the Daffy Chariot.
daffy-headed (adj.)

foolish.

[UK] in Sun. Express (London) 25 Oct. 7: The daffy-headed dimmo who worries about glove compartments doesn’t exist.
J.P. Hogan Cradle of Saturn 175: So you weren't being daffy-headed after twenty-four hours in orbit.
B. Maines Compact with the Devil 164: You’d have to be daffy-headed to think of it.
daffy house (n.) (also daffy joint) [joint n. (3b)]

(US) a psychiatric institution.

Governor’s Son [vaudeville script] Algy: Say, what is this, a daffy house? Curtis: It’ll be a rough house before I’m through.
[US]‘Hugh McHugh’ Back to the Woods 94: If I wasn’t in a daffy house and him nothin’ but a bug, it’s the weight of that chair he’d feel over his bald spot.
[US]B. Fisher A. Mutt in Blackbeard Compilation (1977) 49: I will be able to get any kind of odds I want in the daffy joint.
[US]‘Sing Sing No. 57,700’ My View on Books in N.Y. Times Mag. 21 May 7/5: He is a trifle loose in the coco and today we’d send him to the daffy house.
[UK]F.O. Bartlett Guardian 193: Be you crazy, Bella? [...] Maybe I am. But I ’ll bet a dollar to a lead nickel I ’d be headed for the daffy house .
[US]Nat. Druggist 52 260/1: I didn’t stay there long, because I don’t care to spend my old age in a daffy-house.