madhouse means A house where insane persons are confined; an insane asylum. Lexicurio rates it Distinctive — a strength score of 66 out of 100.
madhouse is pronounced /ˈmædˌhaʊs/.
Etymology
From mad + house.
noun
- A house where insane persons are confined; an insane asylum.“The palace, the night-cellar, the jail, the madhouse: the chambers of birth and death, of health and sickness, the rigid face of the corpse and the calm sleep of the child: midnight was upon them all.”
- A chaotic, uproarious, noisy place.“This taut, soldierly, professional story is something of a stranger among American novels about war making. Angry civilians have writ ten most of the best fiction on the subject, from “Three Soldiers” through “Catch‐22,” to make the point (with a good deal of literary overkill) that wars are mass insanity and that armies are madhouses.”