frantic

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments  · 
She could hear herself laughing--frantic, hateful, jangling laughter that wouldn't stop.

View all »
Definitions (11)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. adjective Highly excited with strong emotion or frustration; frenzied: frantic with worry.
  2. adjective Characterized by rapid and disordered or nervous activity: made a frantic last-minute search for the lost key.
  3. adjective Archaic Mad; insane.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (5)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (2)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • It's a little frantic, as if there's so much he wants to share, but isn't quite sure how to get it across best. —  Comic Book Resources
  • Baby Smiling in Back Seat has a fantastic post charting how she entered her current state of empty and frantic, the incremental steps that took her farther and farther from life before trying-to-conceive. —  Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters
  • Yet it is difficult to determine who is more frantic, the new-old prime minister or his critics.
  • While the rest of the staff at the stunning but dysfunctional Fontainebleau seems perpetually frantic, the tone at Scarpetta is poised, calm and utterly professional. —  miami.com -
  • Flummoxed and frantic, their shameful attacks on Palin and her family have revealed that liberal Democrats, the mainstream media, and those malicious hacks in the "progressive" blogosphere are willing to navigate the deepest, darkest sludge of slash-and-burn politics to see their man, Barack Obama, elected President. —  The Reality Check
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 151 times.

On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Add a related word »
Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

frenzied ·  desperate ·  mad ·  hysterical ·  breathless ·  passionate ·  angry ·  urgent ·  futile ·  shrill ·  foolish ·  incessant
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English frantik, from Old French frenetique, from Latin phrenēticus; see frenetic.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. Formerly frantick, frentick, frantik, also phrantick, phrentick; from Middle English frentik, frenetik, from Old French frenetique, French frénétique = Provencal frenetic = Spanish frenético = Portuguese Italian frenetico, from Middle Latin freneticus, Latin phreneticus or phreniticus (whence English also phrenetic), from Gr, φενητικός, correctly φρενιτικός, mad, suffering from inflammation of the brain (phrenitis), from φρενῖτις, inflammation of the brain, from φρήν(φρεν-) the brain: see phrenitis. Cf. franzy = frenzy, and frenetic = phrenetic.
  2. from frantic, adjective
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »

/ˈfræntɪk/
by American Heritage

Charts

frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word about twice a month.

Recently looked up

statuette · cacophony · grit · biennial · Pterodactyl

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

Der dicke Dachdecker deckte dir dein Dach, drum dank dem dicken Dachdecker, dass der dicke Dachdecker dir dein Dach deckte. · weitläufig · und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, so leben sie noch heute · redescheu · selbstverständlich