lunatic

• lunatick (obsolete)

From Middle English lunatik, from Old French lunatique, from Late Latin lunaticus (“moonstruck”), derived from Latin luna (“moon”), the connection stemming from the belief that changes of the moon caused intermittent insanity.

• IPA^(key): /ˈluːnətɪk/

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lunatic (plural lunatics)

1. An insane person.

   Synonyms: moonling; see also Thesaurus:mad person

   • 1902, Hilaire Belloc, The Path to Rome:

     While there are other races (or individuals—heaven forgive me, I am no ethnologist) who think you a criminal or a lunatic unless you carefully plod along from step to step like a hippopotamus out of water.

   • 1980 March 7, Billy Joel, “You May Be Right”, in Glass Houses‎:

     You may be right
     I may be crazy
     Oh, but it just may be a lunatic you're looking for

• lunacy
• lunatical
• lunatic asylum
• lunatic fringe
• lunatics have taken over the asylum

lunatic (comparative more lunatic, superlative most lunatic)

1. Crazed, mad, insane, demented.
2. (literary, rare) Relating to the Moon; lunar.
   • 1996, Joel C. Relihan, “Menippus in Antiquity and the Renaissance”, in R. Bracht Branham, Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé, editors, The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy, Berkeley, C.A. : University of California Press, →ISBN, page 269:

     As the narrator turns his attention to the moon itself and its Lunatic inhabitants, Heinsius seems to draw on the True History, but is still within the confines of the Icaromenippus.

   • 2020, Kim Stanley Robinson, chapter 53, in The Ministry for the Future, New York, N.Y.: Orbit Books, →ISBN, page 235:

     That or I might bounce off something I hit and head back out into space, become the light in the eye of some lunatic observer, looking up at the big blue ball and seeing me bang something in their retina.

1. (literary, rare) Influenced or affected by the Moon.
   • 1956 Summer, David R[ytman] Slavitt, “Partiti da Cotesti che son Morti”, in The Kenyon Review, volume XVIII, number 3, Gambier, O.H.: Kenyon College, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 370:

     This I remember: she was false as the lunatic sea.

• crazed, insane, mad, demented, maniacal, psychotic; see also Thesaurus:insane

• lunatically

• lunatic soup
• de lunatico inquirendo

• “lunatic, adj. & n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.

• cut nail, tunical

• IPA^(key): /luˈna.tik/

Inherited from Latin lūnāticus, equivalent to lună +‎ -atic.

• lunatec

lunatic m (plural lunatici)

1. somnambulist, sleepwalker

   Synonyms: somnambul, somnambulist, noctambul

2. (rare) dullard, fool, scatterbrain

   Synonyms: prostănac, cretin

lunatic m or n (feminine singular lunatică, masculine plural lunatici, feminine and neuter plural lunatice)

1. (popular, rare) born in the same month as another

• lună

Borrowed from French lunatique, Italian lunatico.

lunatic m or n (feminine singular lunatică, masculine plural lunatici, feminine and neuter plural lunatice)

1. (rare) having hallucinations
2. (rare) fantastic, unreal, bizarre
3. having unusual or strange ideas and behavior
4. (rare) fearful

• zăpăcit

• lunatic in DEX online—Dicționare ale limbii române (Dictionaries of the Romanian language)