crazy n.
1. (orig. US) a mad person.
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]. | ||
(con. 1900) Green Grow the Lilacs I iv: Well, fer land’s-a-livin’! Of all the crazies! | ||
Mad mag. Sept. 24: We heard some motorcycle crazies have taken over Cosmopolis. | ||
Guardian Weekly 7 Nov. 19: Like the best of all goons, clowns or assorted crazies, he is deadly serious. | ||
Feeling Good 83: They must be crazies with whom you would have little in common. | ||
Green River Rising 40: They all knew that crazies didn’t feel pain. | ||
Indep. on Sun. Real Life 16 Jan. 4: The kind of crazy you’re anxious will sit next to you on a train. | ||
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. | ||
Them (2008) 78: They used to pay twenny dollars a head to turn in crazies to the loony farm. | ||
Orphan Road 22: ’[P]retending to chase Atlantis with the rest of the crazies’. |
2. (also crazies, the) a feeling of madness.
It (1987) 41: Too many people seem to have the deep-down crazies. | ||
Iced 35: They’re bearin’ down on me, draggin’ new crazies into my circle of guilt. |
3. (drugs) cocaine.
Crumple Zone 207: There’s a gram of crazy here. |
In compounds
(US prison) a special part of a prison used for insane or uncontrollable prisoners.
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. | ||
Criminal Sl. (rev. edn). | ||
(con. c.1910) 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. | ||
Prison Sl. 9: Crazy Alley also Cranky Hatch The segregation area of a prison reserved for the mentally unstable inmates. |
1. a psychiatric institution.
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. | ||
How the Other Half Lives 66: The ‘old man,’ who lived in the corner coop, [...] had been taken to the ‘crazy house.’. | ||
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? | ||
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. | ||
(con. 1900) Green Grow the Lilacs I ii: Gonna start you right off to Vinita to the crazy house! | ||
Mister Jelly Roll (1952) 60: He died in the crazy house. | ||
Breakfast at Tiffany’s 14: Dead. Or in a crazy house. Or married. | ||
Godfather 371: I mean committed. You know, the crazy house. | ||
After Hours 57: I hear he’s in the crazy house. | ||
(con. 1930s) Addicts Who Survived 100: Gurrah died in the crazy house. | ||
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. | ||
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.
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. | ||
After Hours 79: Place was like a crazyhouse. |