Word.ws English Dictionary

mad cow

mad cow noun: mad cow disease; bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

Noun

mad cow (usually uncountable, plural mad cows)

  1. (usually, by ellipsis) Mad cow disease; bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
  2. (countable, usually) A cow afflicted with mad cow disease.
  3. (usually) Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see mad, cow.

Forms of mad cow

pluralmad cows

Origin of mad cow

Ellipsis of mad cow disease.

Questions about mad cow

What does mad cow mean?
Mad cow means mad cow disease; bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
What part of speech is mad cow?
Mad cow is a noun.
What is the plural of mad cow?
The plural of mad cow is mad cows.

Words near mad cow in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mad cow (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 cow.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mad_cow. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.