delirious

From delirium +‎ -ous; see also Latin delirus (“silly, doting, crazy”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dɪˈlɪɹɪ.əs/, /dɪˈlɪəɹɪ.əs/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪəɹiəs

delirious (comparative more delirious, superlative most delirious)

1. (medicine) Being in the state of delirium.
   • 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, Canto XVI, page 26:

     ⁠Or has the shock, so harshly given,
     […] made me that delirious man
     ⁠Whose fancy fuses old and new,
     ⁠And flashes into false and true,
     And mingles all without a plan?

   • 1872, Simon Mohler Landis, The Social War, Chapter III: Deacon Stew raves at Lucinda's Love for Victor:

     […] the angelic form of a creature whose very existence was a gigantic balm of Gilead to the lacerated body of our hero, and, in a half delirious state of mind, he felt like leaping mountains to raise prostrate female forms, and to become blessed with hymeneal joys of the most glorious character; but, his imagination soon forsook him, and a raging fever, accompanied by the most violent deadly delirium, ensued, which lasted a fortnight.

2. Having uncontrolled excitement; ecstatic.

• deliriously
• deliriousness