Word.ws English Dictionary

all bedlam breaks loose

all bedlam breaks loose phrase: the situation becomes chaotic or characterized by conflict or rage.

Phrase

all bedlam breaks loose

  1. (idiomatic) The situation becomes chaotic or characterized by conflict or rage.

Origin of all bedlam breaks loose

Probably coined to act as an alternative to all hell breaks loose that would not be perceived to be potentially insensitive, impious, or otherwise inappropriate.

Questions about all bedlam breaks loose

What does all bedlam breaks loose mean?
All bedlam breaks loose means the situation becomes chaotic or characterized by conflict or rage.
What part of speech is all bedlam breaks loose?
All bedlam breaks loose is a phrase.

Words near all bedlam breaks loose in the dictionary

  1. all as one
  2. all at once
  3. all bark and no bite
  4. all bark but no bite
  5. all bark no bite
  6. all bedlam breaks loose
  7. all bedlam broke loose
  8. all bets are off
  9. All Black
  10. All Blacks
  11. all bluff and bluster

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: all bedlam breaks loose (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “all bedlam breaks loose.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/all_bedlam_breaks_loose. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.