madness
/ˈmæd.nəs/noun
madness is spelled M-A-D-N-E-S-S. The wrong spelling people search most is maddness: about 100 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 22 of all searches for the word. Madness is a noun meaning “The state of being mad; insanity; mental disease”. The plural of madness is madnesses.
How many letters and syllables are in madness?
| Letters | 7: M-A-D-N-E-S-S |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 9.3 times per million words; the 7,445th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, maddness, about 100 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell madness?
Madness is spelled M-A-D-N-E-S-S. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 22 of the searches for madness in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is madness?
Madness appears 9.3 times per million words in written English, the 7,445th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce madness?
- UK /ˈmad.nəs/
- US /ˈmæd.nəs/
- US /ˈmæd.nɪs/
Madness has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-madness.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of madness
- madnesses plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does madness mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The state of being mad; insanity; mental disease.
- 2
The state of being angry.
- 3
Rash folly.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Madness in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense insanity:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | folie |
| German | Wahnsinn, Verrücktheit |
| Portuguese | loucura, insanidade, maluquice, malucagem, vesânia, doidice |
| Spanish | locura |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does madness come from?
From Middle English madnes, madnesse; equivalent to mad + -ness.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).