barking mad
/bɑːkɪŋ mæd/
"barking-mad" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“barking mad” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 11
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Completely insane.
Corpus desk
Index EN-barking-mad · barking mad · English
barking mad · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 11 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "B" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | barking mad |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /bɑːkɪŋ mæd/ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “barking mad” in English
Rare enough to double-check
barking mad is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective, transcribed /bɑːkɪŋ mæd/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Completely insane.".
barking mad doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: From barking + mad. The correct English form is barking mad, spelled B-A-R-K-I-N-G- -M-A-D.
Definition
- 1Completely insane.
Etymology
From barking + mad.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.