Word.ws English Dictionary

mad cap

mad cap is the alternative form of madcap.

Meaning of madcap

Noun

madcap (plural madcaps)

  1. A person who acts in a capricious, impulsive, or reckless manner.
    • Near-synonyms: mad lad, madlad
    Synonyms:
    mad lad, madlad
  2. (South-Asia) A very foolish or irresponsible person; a fool, an idiot.
    • [R]un around as he commands. He is a madcap and we must learn to live with him. We are in his hands.1983, R[asipuram] K[rishnaswami] Narayan[aswami], A Tiger for Malgudi, New Delhi; Navrangpura, Ahmedabad: Allied Publishers [in arrangement with William Heinemann], →OCLC, page 50
  3. (obsolete, rare) An insane person; a lunatic.
    • VVhy vvhat a mad-cap hath heauen lent vs here?c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...

See all 4 meanings of madcap

Forms of mad cap

pluralmad caps

Questions about mad cap

What is mad cap the alternative form of?
Mad cap is the alternative form of madcap.

Words near mad cap in the dictionary

  1. mad as a meat axe
  2. mad as a mongoose
  3. mad as a wet hen
  4. mad as cut snakes
  5. mad as hops
  6. mad cap
  7. mad caps
  8. mad cow
  9. mad cow disease
  10. mad cows
  11. mad dog

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mad cap (page history and authors); madcap (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: “mad cap.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mad_cap. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.