madding

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of mad. Archaic, now found mainly in the phrase "far from the madding crowd."

   Note

   The final d doubles before -ing, which gives a spelling identical to the archaic "raging" adjective. As a living verb it carries the colloquial US and Jamaican sense and takes an object: something is madding you when it angers or frustrates you. The older intransitive use, in which a person is madding in the sense of going mad, is obsolete.

2. 2
   adjectivearchaic

   Driven by madness; raging and furious.

   Like a storm that rages on without sense or restraint.

   The madding king raved through the halls, accusing his own guards of treason.

   The madding wheels of brazen chariots raged.

   1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost

   Note

   This archaic adjective belongs to poetry. Thomas Gray's Elegy gives it its best-known line: "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife." It describes something that is itself in a frenzy, like Milton's raging chariot wheels in Paradise Lost or Owen Feltham's restless thought. It does not describe what drives others mad, so Gray's crowd is wild, not irritating. Use it before its noun, and only in deliberately archaic or allusive writing.

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