Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective In a state of frenzy; frenzied.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Becoming mad; acting madly; distracted; raging; furious.
  • noun Madness; folly; a vagary; a wild freak or prank.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Affected with madness; raging; furious.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective archaic : Affected with madness; raging; furious.
  • verb Present participle of mad.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Paradoxically, the very men who had opened up the landscape to the people still dreamed of getting far from the madding crowd.

    Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey by Rachel Hewitt - review Ian Pindar 2010

  • It's a quiet, serene place "far from the madding crowd."

    Nancy Davis: The "Gift of Giving" Nancy Davis 2011

  • Some of us prefer building their own 'masterpiece' according to their personal inspiration, beliefs and talents, taking greater pride and joy within their own little world, 'away from the madding crowd'.

    mise-en-scène - French Word-A-Day 2009

  • In the morning, traffic crept at a clogged and madding stop-go pace, cars and trucks halted mid-turn, stopped askew in the road.

    The Last Lion Brittany Newmark 2011

  • It is a burden, is creativity; but embrace it for, paradoxically, it will not hold you down but will lift you up, far above the madding crowd.

    mise-en-scène - French Word-A-Day 2009

  • In the morning, traffic crept at a clogged and madding stop-go pace, cars and trucks halted mid-turn, stopped askew in the road.

    The Last Lion Brittany Newmark 2011

  • Elsewhere in the Observer the madding crowd strives away like billy-o, just as it did in the days of Richard Nixon and Reginald Maudling, but for those needing a refuge from the weekly din there's still the cool sequester'd vale inhabited by Azed.

    Azed: a giant among crosswords Francis Wheen 2010

  • No one could accuse his crosswords of blushing unseen – not even when they were exiled to a distant outpost in the travel section for a few years – but the poem was more fitting than he knew: "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,/Their sober wishes never learned to stray,/Along the cool sequester'd vale of life/They kept the noiseless tenor of their way."

    Azed: a giant among crosswords Francis Wheen 2010

  • Radio 5 Live has been excelling itself with some reflective features far from the madding crowd of its usual breathless hurly-burly.

    Sport in celluloid: Why Raging Bull lacks punch of Chariots of Fire | Frank Keating 2011

  • Wessex's two other footballing figures of grandeur left the madding crowds behind to return to their native heath and hearths.

    Epic tales of the Wessex footballing crowd | Frank Keating 2011

Comments

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  • "I agreed with George, and suggested that we should seek out some retired and old-world spot, far from the madding crowd, and dream away a sunny week among its drowsy lanes - some half-forgotten nook, hidden away by the fairies, out of reach of the noisy world - some quaint-perched eyrie on the cliffs of Time, from whence the surging waves of the nineteenth

    century would sound far-off and faint."

    - Jerome K. Jerome, 'Three Men in a Boat'.

    August 28, 2009

  • I love that book!

    August 28, 2009