Green’s Dictionary of Slang

crazy n.

1. (orig. US) a mad person.

[US]Harper’s Mag. Oct. 702/1: The doctor from the crazies [...] tried all kinds o’ brainy tricks on her but her head was ’s sound as their own [DA].
[US](con. 1900) L. Riggs Green Grow the Lilacs I iv: Well, fer land’s-a-livin’! Of all the crazies!
[US]Mad mag. Sept. 24: We heard some motorcycle crazies have taken over Cosmopolis.
[UK]Guardian Weekly 7 Nov. 19: Like the best of all goons, clowns or assorted crazies, he is deadly serious.
[US]D. Burns Feeling Good 83: They must be crazies with whom you would have little in common.
[US]T. Willocks Green River Rising 40: They all knew that crazies didn’t feel pain.
[UK]Indep. on Sun. Real Life 16 Jan. 4: The kind of crazy you’re anxious will sit next to you on a train.
[Aus]P. Temple Broken Shore (2007) [ebook] [His] male lover had been found knifed to death [...] possibly killed by one of the sexual crazies for which Adelaide was famous.
[US]N. McCall Them (2008) 78: They used to pay twenny dollars a head to turn in crazies to the loony farm.
[Aus]A. Nette Orphan Road 22: ’[P]retending to chase Atlantis with the rest of the crazies’.

2. (also crazies, the) a feeling of madness.

[US]S. King It (1987) 41: Too many people seem to have the deep-down crazies.
[US]R. Shell Iced 35: They’re bearin’ down on me, draggin’ new crazies into my circle of guilt.

3. (drugs) cocaine.

[UK]N. Barlay Crumple Zone 207: There’s a gram of crazy here.

In compounds

crazy alley (n.)

(US prison) a special part of a prison used for insane or uncontrollable prisoners.

[US]San Quentin Bulletin in L.A. Times 6 May 7: CRAZY ALLEY, a fenced-in section at San Quentin where slightly daffy prisoners are kept.
[US]Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
[US](con. c.1910) G. Duffy Warden’s Wife 49: Crazy Alley [...] was by no means even a crude precursor of the psychiatric wards of today. It was just a place to immure prisoners who were troublesome because they had gone crazy.
[US]Bentley & Corbett Prison Sl. 9: Crazy Alley also Cranky Hatch The segregation area of a prison reserved for the mentally unstable inmates.
crazy house (n.) (US)

1. a psychiatric institution.

[US]Lantern (N.O.) 16 July 2: You must know when Councilman Amann sent him off to keep him from being sent to a crazy house.
[US]J.A. Riis How the Other Half Lives 66: The ‘old man,’ who lived in the corner coop, [...] had been taken to the ‘crazy house.’.
[Ire]J.M. Synge Playboy of the Western World Act III: Is it mad yous are? Is it in a crazy house for females that I’m landed now?
[US]Pacific Reporter 165 1152/1: Affidavit Tom [...] clearly indicates that he should be sent to the bug house, the crazy house, the foolish house, the bat house, the looney house, the mad house, the nutty house.
[US](con. 1900) L. Riggs Green Grow the Lilacs I ii: Gonna start you right off to Vinita to the crazy house!
[US]A. Lomax Mister Jelly Roll (1952) 60: He died in the crazy house.
[US]T. Capote Breakfast at Tiffany’s 14: Dead. Or in a crazy house. Or married.
[US]M. Puzo Godfather 371: I mean committed. You know, the crazy house.
[US]E. Torres After Hours 57: I hear he’s in the crazy house.
[US](con. 1930s) Courtwright & Des Jarlais Addicts Who Survived 100: Gurrah died in the crazy house.
J. Saleeby Awful Waffle 43: I work at The Crazy House, The Funny Farm, The Loony Bin, The Laughing Academy. . . I can’t identify the hospital I work at by name.
[US]N. McCall Them (2008) 93: There was sometimes work to be had at the state mental hospital [...] most of the patients at the crazy house had either fled, were fleeing, or were plotting escape.

2. a ‘madhouse’, somewhere that resembles a lunatic asylum.

[US]V.G. Burns Female Convict (1960) 143: This place is a crazy house. I think I’ll go out of my mind if I have to stay here much longer.
[US]E. Torres After Hours 79: Place was like a crazyhouse.