Barking mad
Suggest a CorrectionMeaning
Completely irrational, wildly unreasonable, or apparently out of touch with reality. A strong informal expression. It is less harmful when aimed at a plan or decision; applying it to a person can be insulting and can stigmatize mental illness. It is not a clinical description. Regional use: Chiefly British informal English, with use elsewhere.
Origin
The modern idiom is securely recorded by 1927, when an Oklahoma newspaper used barking mad as an intensifying description. Barking evokes the conspicuous sound and behaviour of a dog and may have been reinforced by older comparisons with mad or rabid dogs, but the exact route into the idiom is not proved. The story that it comes from a medieval asylum at Barking Abbey is chronologically unsupported, and it is unrelated to barking up the wrong tree.
Research Sources
Variants
- Barking
Usage Examples
- Committing the entire budget before the trial results arrive would be barking mad.
- The novel's narrator thinks anyone crossing the ice in April is barking mad.
- She called the timetable barking mad, then produced a workable alternative.