Word.ws English Dictionary

doolally tap

doolally tap noun: camp fever; by extension, madness, eccentricity.

Noun

doolally tap (uncountable)

  1. Camp fever; by extension, madness, eccentricity.
    • Mrrhhhh, nothing wrong with me, sergeant, it's just the old Doolally Tap.1971, Brian Aldiss, A Soldier Erect
    • 'The Doolally tap,' my father would say, mysteriously, and McAllister would agree.1994, Maurice Hayes, Seamus Heaney, Sweet Killough: Let Go Your Anchor

Adjective

doolally tap (comparative more doolally tap, superlative most doolally tap)

  1. (UK) Mad, insane, eccentric.
    • Going a bit doolally-tap, if you ask me. Getting odd ideas.1985, John E. Gardner, The Secret Generations, page 294
    • The whole family think I've gone doolally-tap; all except Mick, that is.1993, Catherine Cookson, My Beloved Son, page 355

Examples of doolally tap in a sentence

  • Most thought that the prison sentence had sent me doolally tap.1994, Julia Grant, Just Julia: The Story of an Extraordinary Woman, page 198:
  • Madam has gone quite definitely doolally tap, if you'll pardon the rather common expression.1996, Erin Pizzey, Kisses, page 277:
  • If he had not paid her phone bills she would have gone doolally tap, as her mother used to say, without a friendly voice now and then.2007, Martina Cole, Faces, unnumbered page:

Forms of doolally tap

Noun
alternative formdoolally-tap
Adjective
comparativemore doolally tap
superlativemost doolally tap

Origin of doolally tap

From Deolali (the name of a former British army camp 100 miles north-east of Bombay, used as a transit station for soldiers awaiting transport back to Britain) + tap (from Persian or Urdu تب (tab, “malarial fever”), ultimately from Sanskrit ताप (tāpa, “heat; fever”)). According to one suggestion, to go doolally tap was to go crazy while waiting.

Words formed from doolally tap

Questions about doolally tap

What does doolally tap mean?
Doolally tap means camp fever; by extension, madness, eccentricity.
How do you use doolally tap in a sentence?
Most thought that the prison sentence had sent me doolally tap.
What part of speech is doolally tap?
Doolally tap can be a noun or an adjective.

Words near doolally tap in the dictionary

  1. dooky braid
  2. dooky braids
  3. dool tree
  4. dool trees
  5. doolally
  6. doolally tap
  7. Doolan
  8. Doolans
  9. doole
  10. doolee
  11. doolees

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: doolally tap (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.

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Cite this entry: “doolally tap.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/doolally_tap. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.