Read the excerpt from Samuel Johnson's
A Dictionary
How does this dictionary entry differ from those
of the English Language.
dictionaries?
Mádness. n.s. [from mad.]
• It provides more than one definition for the w
Distraction; loss of understanding; perturbation of the
It uses the word in a sentence.
faculties.
O It reveals the word's root or derivative.
Why, woman, your husband is in his old tunes again: he
It includes published examples of the word's
so rails against all married mankind, SO curses all Eve's
daughters, and so buffets himself on the forehead, that
any madness I ever yet beheld seemed but tameness
and civility to this distemper. Shakesp. Merry Wives of
Windsor.
There are degrees of madness as of folly, the disorderly
jumbling ideas together, in some more, some less.
Locke.