Word.ws English Dictionary

mad as a fish

mad as a fish adjective: demented, crazy.

Adjective

mad as a fish (not comparable)

  1. (slang) Demented, crazy.
    • Voluble, almost incomprehensible, mad as a fish and perpetually drunk.2006, Damon Hammond, Totally Steaming: A Year on HMS Fearless, page 202
    • The only one I'm scared of is that Eliza Cooper. Mad as a fish that one.2006, Lou Bellamy, Haunting the Dead, page 38

Examples of mad as a fish in a sentence

  • I've got a station chief who's as mad as a fish, an incomplete briefing, and a gambling-obsessed billionaire to out-bluff.2007, Charles Stross, The Jennifer Morgue:
  • Sean, the older brother, was as mad as a fish, but he was also the one with the brains and together they were a very entrepreneurial family.2008, Andy Taylor, Wild Boy: My Life in Duran Duran:

Questions about mad as a fish

What does mad as a fish mean?
Mad as a fish means demented, crazy.
How do you use mad as a fish in a sentence?
I've got a station chief who's as mad as a fish, an incomplete briefing, and a gambling-obsessed billionaire to out-bluff.
What part of speech is mad as a fish?
Mad as a fish is an adjective.

Words near mad as a fish in the dictionary

  1. mad apples
  2. mad as a bear with a sore head
  3. mad as a box of frogs
  4. mad as a brush
  5. mad as a cut snake
  6. mad as a fish
  7. mad as a hatter
  8. mad as a hornet
  9. mad as a March hare
  10. mad as a meat axe
  11. mad as a mongoose

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mad as a fish (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-mad as a fish.ogg.

Cite this entry: “mad as a fish.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mad_as_a_fish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.