Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Aus.) an exceptionally eccentric person.

1941		Baker Popular Dict. Aus. Sl.
1955		N. Pulliam I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 142: Any telephone operator would type you for a loopy madhaddock if you tried to put through a telephone call.
1984		Partridge DSUE (8th edn).

(US teen) someone who sells drugs.

1997–2001

Online Sl. Dict. 🌐 mad hatter n 1. someone who sells drugs and other illegal substaces. (‘I’m going to go pick some stuff up from the madhatter up on Main.’).

a mentally unstable individual.

[1608		Generall Historie of the Netherlands 457: The Seignior of Launoy, earle of March (a mad head) having sworn never to cut his haire nor beard, nor to cut his nailes, until he were revened for the death of the earle of Egmont his cousin].
1916		L. Doyle Mr Wildridge 150: Don’t be a madhead, Jacks [...] I can manage johnny.
1938		Best Plays of 1937 118: Brigid, they tell him, has heard them talkin’ of what the town people were sayin’ about O'Flingsley and away she had run, like a madhead.
1970		P.V. Carroll Goodbye to the Summer 11: I ran off like a madhead and forgot them.
1994		A. Sillitoe Snowstop [ebook] I’m not such a madhead any more.
2008		A. Chakraborty Brunching with Ophelia 45: I’m glad you’ve become less of a wonky, but in a way since you’re hardly penning down anything these days, I guess you were better off as a madhead.
2011		J.J. Connolly Viva La Madness 41: Cokeheads are liabilities [...] Dangerous! Madheads!

1. (US tramp) a saloon.

1917

Cincinnati Enquirer (OH) 12 May 12/2: ‘I steps out uh the madhouse (saloon)’.

2. (US) in institutions, e.g. USN, prisons, an environment offering especially unpleasant conditions.

1905		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 23 Dec. 7: The old practice ships were what sailors call ‘madhouses’. It was drill all day and watch and watch all night.
1907		C. Fowler letter 23 Jan. in Tomlinson Rocky Mountain Sailor (1998) 207: The routine has been changed [...] and there is more drill and less liberty, it seems. The regulations are being more rigidly enforced, also. The Baltimore and the Cincinnati are, to use a Navy expression, regular ‘mad-houses’.
1928		J. Callahan Man’s Grim Justice 155: I had been in the New England ‘madhouse’ now about eleven months.
1931		G. Milburn ‘Convicts’ Jargon’ in AS VI:6 440: mad house, n. A prison that is ‘tough’ is termed a madhouse. ‘Conditions at Great Meadows are much better than at the Auburn madhouse.’.
1979		W.D. Myers The Young Landlords 27: Most city buildings look terrible, and the madhouse my father worked in was no exception.

1. (drugs) a notably strong variety of a given drug, e.g. heroin.

1993

Tarantino & Avery Pulp Fiction [film script] 32: Give me three hundred worth of the madman.

2. (drugs) phencyclidine.

2001

ONDCP Street Terms 14: Madman — PCP.

3. (UK black) a notably violent gang member.

2017

Eve. Standard 4 July 8/5: The highest level [of gang member] is mad man. He’s done heavy stuff [...] A mad man will take on a whole gang by himself.

crazy, absurd.

1961

R.A. Norton Through Beatnik Eyeballs 4: That plenty go on the madmen Bomb and rockets when it could go to help animals seem tough.

1. (orig. US) money carried by a woman for an emergency, such as being abandoned far from home by her boyfriend when she hasn’t agreed to sex [the ‘madness’ is in the anger of the boyfriend].

1922		Oakland Trib. 13 Apr. 1/2: ’[I]f you’ll promise you'll cart around no strikebreakers, I promise that I’ll never squirrel any mad money when we blouses around’.
1926		S. Young Encaustics 5: Mad money, he explained [...] is what they take with them to get home on in case they fall out with the fellow they’ve gone with.
1937		Everyday Fashion of the Thirties [...] in Sears Catalogs (1986) 91: MAD MONEY ‘stays put’ in this pleated Acetate Crepe bag with ‘jools’ on top and the right fixin’s inside.
1935		A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks.
1943		J.A.W. Bennett ‘Eng. as it is Spoken in N.Z.’ in AS XVIII:2 Apr. 92: Mad money (the money which a girl-friend keeps in reserve in case she decides to leave in a hurry).
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).

2. (US) savings set aside for some spontaneous, unscheduled expenditure, usu. on pleasure [the madness is in the spending].

1939		R. Chandler Big Sleep 62: He carried fifteen thousand dollars, in bills. He called it his mad money.
1971		R.D. Pharr S.R.O. (1998) 476: Joey and i have five dollars saved back. Mad money, kinda..
1988		McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 71/1: mad money splurge money; originally return ship fare WWI soldiers believed English girls brought with them in case their Kiwi soldier boy went mad, ie acted with excessive freedom. [Baker].
1990		J. Wambaugh Golden Orange (1991) 69: You should’ve put mad money aside every chance you got.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].

a beggar who counterfeits madness, the 18th rank of criminal beggars.

1612		Dekker O per se O M4: Some of them can play the Abram, (be madde Toms), or else begge Rum Maund (counterfeit to be a Foole).
1656		Mennis & Smith et al. ‘In Praise of noble Liquor’ in Wit and Drollery 15: The only way to cure him [...] Must be the grate of Bishoppes gate / Where mad Tom will expect him / There let him drink old Sack, old Sack.
1688		R. Holme Academy of Armory Ch. iii item 68b: Give me leave to give you the names (as in their Canting Language they call themselves) of all (or most of such) as follow the Vagabond Trade, according to their Regiments or Divisions, as [...] Wild Rogues, Mad Men, Bedlams, called also Mad Toms.
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Mad Tom, alias of Bedlam, the Eighteenth Rank of Canters.
1725		New Canting Dict. n.p.: mad Tom alias of Bedlam; otherwise called Abram-men.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. 1725].
1750		in Mad Tom’s Garland 2: [song title] Old Mad Tom of Bedlam.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
a.1790		H.T. Potter New Dict. Cant (1797).
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1821		Flash Dict. n.p.: Mad Toms of Bedlam fellows who counterfeit madness in the streets, and after beating themselve [sic] about, spit out occasionally some blood, in order to convince the too-feeling multitude, that they have injured themselves by violent struggles in their fit; to get the pity of the bye-standers, and obtain relief: they have a small bladder of sheep’s-blood in their mouth , and when they think proper they can discharge it; no person telling it from human blood.
1834		(con. 1737–9) W.H. Ainsworth Rookwood (1857) 281: A head of hair as full of straw as Mad Tom’s is represented to be on the stage.
1848		Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum.

(UK black) crazy.

1999		(con. 1979–80) A. Wheatle Brixton Rock (2004) 85: They jump about and do that mad-up head-slapping skank.
2001		(con. 1981) A. Wheatle East of Acre Lane 79: You know so he gets mad-up if he’s left out of de herb runnings.

an empty coach.

1834-70s		Morn. Advertiser (London) 5 Dec. 1/3: [A]n empty coach, the mad woman; the whip, a tool .
1876		‘Some Road Slang Terms’ in Malet Annals of the Road 389: 1. Of a Coach The mad woman...An empty coach.

(Aus.) a general answer to the question, ‘Where is X?’.

1944		L. Glassop We Were the Rats 47: ‘I just came in for a yarn with Happy. Where is he?’ ‘If ya referrin’ ter Mr Simpson he went mad and they shot him.’.
1953		I. Bevan Sunburnt Country 129: ‘He went mad and they shot him’ is the routine answer to any superior seeking the whereabouts of a subordinate.
1962		T. Berger Reinhart in Love (1963) 22: ‘Joe around?’ asked Reinhart. [...] ‘He went to crap and the hogs ate him.’.
1975		Woman’s World 8 Oct. 71: Father was unusually late home, having been held up in a traffic jam. Five-year-old-son, tired of waiting for Dad, announced, ‘Perhaps he went mad and they shot him.’ [GAW4].
1984		Partridge DSUE (8th edn).
1991		R.G. Barrett Between the Devlin 83: ‘What happened to little Hoppy?’ ‘He went mad and the police shot him’.

see separate entry.

see separate entry.