Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To cause to become mentally deranged or obsessed.
  • intransitive verb To produce a network of fine cracks in the surface or glaze of.
  • intransitive verb To become mentally deranged or obsessed.
  • intransitive verb To become covered with fine cracks.
  • noun A short-lived popular fashion; a fad.
  • noun A fine crack in a surface or glaze.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A crack in the glaze of pottery; a flaw or defect in general.
  • noun Insanity; craziness; any degree of mental derangement.
  • noun An inordinate desire or longing; a passion.
  • noun An unreasoning or capricious liking or affectation of liking, more or less sudden and temporary, and usually shared by a number of persons, especially in society, for something particular, uncommon, peculiar, or curious; a passing whim: as, a craze for old furniture, or for rare coins or heraldry.
  • To break; burst; break in pieces.
  • To crack or split; open in slight cracks or chinks; crackle; specifically, in pottery, to separate or peel off from the body: said of the glaze. See crazing, 2.
  • To become crazy or insane; become shattered in intellect; break down.
  • To break; break in pieces; crush: as, to craze tin.
  • To make small cracks in; produce a flaw or flaws in, literally or figuratively.
  • To disorder; confuse; weaken; impair the natural force or energy of.
  • To derange the intellect of; dement; render insane; make crazy.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To break into pieces; to crush; to grind to powder. See crase.
  • transitive verb obsolete To weaken; to impair; to render decrepit.
  • transitive verb To derange the intellect of; to render insane.
  • intransitive verb To be crazed, or to act or appear as one that is crazed; to rave; to become insane.
  • intransitive verb To crack, as the glazing of porcelain or pottery.
  • noun Craziness; insanity.
  • noun A strong habitual desire or fancy; a crotchet.
  • noun A temporary passion or infatuation, as for same new amusement, pursuit, or fashion; a fad.
  • noun (Ceramics) A crack in the glaze or enamel such as is caused by exposure of the pottery to great or irregular heat.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Craziness; insanity.
  • noun A strong habitual desire or fancy; a crotchet.
  • noun A temporary passion or infatuation, as for same new amusement, pursuit, or fashion; as, the bric-a-brac craze; the aesthetic craze.
  • verb To weaken; to impair; to render decrepit.
  • verb To derange the intellect of; to render insane.
  • verb To be crazed, or to act or appear as one that is crazed; to rave; to become insane.
  • verb transitive, intransitive, archaic To break into pieces; to crush; to grind to powder. See crase.
  • verb transitive, intransitive To crack, as the glazing of porcelain or pottery.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb cause to go crazy; cause to lose one's mind
  • verb develop a fine network of cracks
  • noun state of violent mental agitation
  • noun an interest followed with exaggerated zeal
  • noun a fine crack in a glaze or other surface

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English crasen, to shatter, of Scandinavian origin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English crasen ("to crush, break, break to pieces, shatter, craze"), from Old Norse *krasa (“to shatter”). Cognate with Danish krase ("to crack, crackle"), Swedish krasa ("to crack, crackle"), Norwegian krasa ("to shatter, crush"), Icelandic krasa ("to crackle").

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Examples

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  • craze was a craze of the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s (see usage graph)

    March 30, 2011