go mad

go mad

1. To become insane or mentally unstable. All this noise in the house, day in, day out—I feel like I'm going mad! She went mad at the sight of her child lying lifeless on the cot.
2. To do something excessive or without hesitation or restraint. I decided to go mad and buy both the dresses I liked. A: "Do you mind if I eat your leftover pizza?" B: "Sure, go mad."
3. To reach an extreme or excessive level or degree. The president's new cabinet is made up entirely of her old friends and former classmates—it's cronyism gone mad!
See also: go, mad
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • day out
  • just another day at the office
  • day by day
  • by the day
  • from day to day
  • make a day of (doing something)
  • make a day of doing
  • make a day of it
  • day off
  • day to day
References in classic literature
If these amazing experiences are real I shall go mad; if they are fanciful I am mad already.
Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad?
"He'll go mad fast enough with a bottle of brandy within reach, and you know it," Trent answered fiercely.
Say you do, young man,' whined the miserable creature, with an imploring gesture towards Barnaby, 'or I shall go mad!'
If not, let the lady Dulcinea look to it; if she does not answer reasonably, I swear as solemnly as I can that I will fetch a fair answer out of her stomach with kicks and cuffs; for why should it be borne that a knight-errant as famous as your worship should go mad without rhyme or reason for a -?
For what seemed hours the eyes approached gradually closer and closer, until I felt that I should go mad for the horror of it.
Thus we continued, the eyes always a little closer in the end than they had been before, until I thought that I should go mad with the terrible strain of the ordeal.
It was the scream of the horse that did it, yet why did not John Harned go mad when the bull was killed?
"This is how people go mad," he repeated, "and how they shoot themselves...to escape humiliation," he added slowly.
There were moments when I felt, not only that I would go mad, but that I had gone mad already; so that I dared not open my lips for fear of betraying myself by some insane shriek.
If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated--chaos and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point!
"I'm not going to go mad, I did not go mad, because I know it hurts the players as much as it hurts me.
When they win, they go mad. When they lose, they go mad as well.
The 'Go Mad for Mussels' promotion is being held at Al Ghazal pub.
"We normally go mad dancing a lot and we've now put effects in it, people physically being able to fly.