Definition of "frantic" in English

adjective

1. (archaic) Insane, mentally unstable.

2. In a state of panic, worry, frenzy, or rush.

   • They returned the missing child to his frantic mother.

3. Extremely energetic.

   • frantic music

noun

1. (archaic) A person who is insane or mentally unstable, madman.

   • 1595, George Peele, The Old Wives’ Tale, The Malone Society Reprints, 1908, lines 3-5, How nowe fellowe Franticke, what all a mort? Doth this sadnes become thy madnes?
   • 1721, Cotton Mather, diary entry for 16 July, 1721 in Diary of Cotton Mather, 1709-1724, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, Seventh Series, Volume VIII, Boston: 1912, p. 632, The Destroyer, being enraged at the Proposal of any Thing, that may rescue the Lives of our poor People from him, has taken a strange Possession of the People on this Occasion. They rave, they rail, they blaspheme; they talk not only like Ideots but also like Franticks, […]