bedlem

Noun

bedlam (countable and uncountable, plural bedlams)

1. A place or situation of chaotic uproar, and where confusion prevails.
   • Some of the wards were veritable "bedlams," and discharged patients have told of abuses practiced in them of which the mere recital causes a shudder.1888, H.H. Giles, The Insane, and the Wisconsin System for their Care, page 18

   Synonyms:

   madhouse, pandemonium

2. (obsolete) An insane person; a lunatic; a madman.
   • Lets follow the old Earle, and get the bedlom
     To lead him where he would, his rogiſh madnes
     Allows it ſelfe to any thing.c. 1603–1606 (date written), [William Shakespeare], […] His True Chronicle Historie of the Life and Death of King Lear and His Three Daughters. […] (First Quarto), London: […] Nathaniel Butter, […]...
3. (obsolete) A lunatic asylum; a madhouse.
   • It was a ſhrewd ſaying of the old Monk, That two kind of Priſons would ſerve for all offenders in the World, an Inquiſition and a Bedlam: If any man ſhould deny the Being of a God and the Immortality of the Soul, ſuch a one ſhould be put into the firſt of these, the Inquiſition, as being a...1664, John Tillotson, “Job xxviij. 28.”, in Sermons Preach’d upon Several Occasions, London: […] A[nne] M[axwell] for Sa[muel] Gellibrand, […], published 1671, →OCLC, page 76

See all 7 meanings of bedlam