You’d be insane not to want to know where all these nutty words for “crazy” came from—and how to properly use them, so people don’t think you’re batty.
CRAZY / CRACKED / CRACKPOT
The verb “to craze” originally meant “to violently shatter,” and most likely came from an Old Norse word. It was first applied to people in 1555 to describe one who was “in ill health.” The use of “crazed” and “crazy” to describe the mentally impaired came about 40 years later. The term “cracked,” from the same root, was first applied to mental derangement around 1611. “Crackpot” is more recent, first appearing in the late 1800s. Often used to describe people with unusual ideas, it was short for “cracked pot”—“pot” having been a common slang term for “head” since the 16th century.
The Latin word sanus means “healthy,” but in English, the term “sane” wasn’t attributed to a “healthy mind” until about 1600. About the same time, its opposite, “insane,” also came into use. The term is no longer used by the medical establishment, who instead refer to a patient’s specific mental illness (such as obsessive-compulsive disorder or schizophrenia). So, technically, no one can be clinically diagnosed as “insane.”
There are a few theories as to where this term came from. A popular one says that it was named for Fitzherbert Batty, a prominent English barrister known for being eccentric, who was certified insane in 1839. London’s newspapers widely publicized the diagnosis, and ever since, “batty” has been used to describe anyone who is harmlessly crazy. Another possible origin is that “batty” is short for “bats in the belfry” (or bell tower), an Americanism dating to at least 1899, when it appeared in William J. Kountz’s Billy Baxter’s Letters: “The leader tore out about $9.00 worth of hair, and acted generally as though he had bats in his belfry.”
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“Nut” in its original sense—peanuts and cashews, for instance—is a very old word, most likely coming from the Indo-European root knu, which meant “lump.” The English word “nut” first appeared around A.D. 875, but wasn’t used to refer to a person’s head until the mid-1800s. Around the same time, anyone who acted a little off kilter was said to be “off his nut” or just “nuts.” However, referring to a crazy person as a “nut” wasn’t common until around 1903. (The British form, “nutter,” didn’t appear until the late 1950s.)
These days, we associate being giddy with being silly or in love. But at one time, being giddy could have gotten you locked up. It first appeared in Old English as the word gydig, meaning “insane” or “possessed.” The root of “giddy” is, in fact, the same Germanic root that gave us the English word “god”—and originally, to be giddy was to be possessed by a god or other supernatural being.
Thought to be a combination of the Icelandic ber (“bear”) and serkr (“shirt”), Berserkers were Norse warriors who wore bearskins into battle and were known for their terrifying, uncontrollable bloodlust. They were thought to have suffered actual fits of madness, referred to as bärsärkar-gång (“going berserk”), described here in Howard Frabing’s On Going Berserk: A Neurochemical Inquiry:
Men who were thus seized performed things which otherwise seemed impossible for human power…which at last gave over into a great rage, under which they howled as wild animals, bit the edge of their shields, and cut down everything they met without discriminating between friend or foe.
Today, we use “berserk” to describe out-of-control behavior.
Crazy for word origins? Go to page 226 for “bonkers,” “wacky,” “madcap,” and more.
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