DELIRIUM • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Delirium

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/dɪlˈɪriəm/ Listen

noun

Delirium n.

(Med.) A state in which the thoughts, expressions, and actions are wild, irregular, and incoherent; mental aberration; a roving or wandering of the mind, usually dependent on a fever or some other disease, and so distinguished from mania, or madness.

Strong excitement; wild enthusiasm; madness. "The popular delirium (of the French Revolution) at first caught his enthusiastic mind." "The delirium of the preceding session (of Parliament)."

Delirium tremens. (Med.), a violent delirium induced by the excessive and prolonged use of intoxicating liquors.

Traumatic delirium (Med.), a variety of delirium following injury.

Synonyms: Insanity; frenzy; madness; derangement; aberration; mania; lunacy; fury. See Insanity.

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Etymology of 'Delirium'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Delirium" Quotes from Famous Books

... intently into my face and believed me, and there was a gleam of uneasiness in her eyes. Enchanted by her presence, warmed by the warmth of her room, I muttered as in delirium, holding out my hands ...

— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... other then. And they fought and rolled until Morgan felt something hard under his oppressed back, and groped for it in the star-shot agony of sinewy fingers choking out his life. His empty gun. It seemed that he grasped it in delirium, and struck with it in the ...

— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... wasn't like a dream. It was rather the threat of some new disease, some brain malady about to descend on me: possibly delirium tremens. I have not been of abstemious ...

— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman

... smoothing her luxuriant hair which hung in the untrammelled freedom of nature over her shoulders. "I have felt sometimes, during the last few days, as if I were awaking out of a long long dream, or recovering from a severe illness in which delirium had played a prominent part. Even now, though I see and touch you, I sometimes tremble lest I should really awake and find that it is all a dream. I have so often—so very often—dreamed something like it in years gone by, but never so vividly as now! I cannot doubt—it ...

— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... letters on his forehead, and indelibly engraven in the recesses of his heart, considering that every tongueless object was eloquent of his woe, and at periods laboring under a semi-perspicuous, semi-opaque, gutta-serena, attended with an acute palpitation of his pericranium, and a most tormenting delirium of intellects from which he finds not the least mitigation until he consopiates his optics under the influence of Morpheus. There are ties of affinity and consanguinity existing between this manfacturer ...

— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

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