lunacy
nounUK /ˈluː.nə.si/ · US /ˈluː.nə.si/
Etymology From lun(atic) + -acy.
› The state of being mad, insanity
1
A cyclical mental disease, apparently linked to the lunar phases.
Of a person or group of people
2
Insanity implying legal irresponsibility.
Of a person or group of people
3
Something deeply misguided.
- Two days have passed since that day of lunacy. What a noise and a fuss and a chattering and an uproar there was! And what a welter of unseemliness and disorder and stupidity and bad manners! And I the cause of it all! Yet part of the scene was also ridiculous—at all events to myself it was so.1867, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, chapter VI, in The Gambler, translated by C. J. Hogarth^(https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Gambler_(1867)/VI):
- Derived terms
- balloonacy, commission of lunacy