Lunatic

The term lunatic is also labelled in three dictionaries, although it receives only few labels in EWE and only a pragmatic label in COBUILD. Furthermore, only two dictionaries make a note about the medical meaning being outdated. The medical sense of lunatic, ‘mentally ill’, is rare in corpora but not non-existent. Although two examples of such cases are in texts related to history, there are two examples where lunatic is found in modern texts, as the following in a newspaper:

(12) Stalin was a paranoid lunatic in the clinical sense (COCA, 2006 NEWS SanFrancisco)

While in some examples the attitude intended is probably neutral, like cretin, lunatic is most often found in contexts where it shows disapproval or criticism towards a person or their behaviour and ideas. However, while cretin is often found with other offensive terms and intensifiers, lunatic is often found alone and not often said directly to the person who is referred to. Moreover, lunatic is often found with modifiers such as slightly which, perhaps, reduce the negativity conveyed by lunatic. Also, lunatic is often not used when criticising someone’s intelligence, but rather, to denote people who are unpredictable and sometimes dangerous:

(13) ‘OK,’ she said, in an attempt to pacify what she thought might be a dangerous lunatic. (BNC, AD9 3474)

In such examples, it is difficult to say whether the use of the term lunatic is used to emphasize the negative attitude, or whether it is the topic itself which creates the critical impression. At the very end of the offensiveness spectrum, there is one example which indicates that on some rare occasions, lunatic can be used as a positive attribute, meanind “wild and fun”:

(14) ‘Dave is our boffin, our crazy, lunatic, eccentric and we love him for it. (BNC, K5H 1159)

7.1.6 Mad, mental and crazy

In BNC and COCA, the terms mad, mental and crazy are all used in similar contexts and the corpora suggest that they are also similar as regards the negative attitude conveyed by them.

Mad and mental are labelled in three dictionaries, while crazy is labelled in two. Yet, all the three terms are found in the corpora in situations where there is a wish to express disapproval towards a person’s actions, ideas or their personality in general:

(15) If you move to California without that type of coverage, you're crazy. (COCA, 2007 SPOK NPR_TellMore)

The terms are usually used in informal language, and most often in cases where the person referred to is not likely to be seriously mentally ill, although in some cases a real mental illness is possible. Additionally, they are mostly found in contexts where the offensiveness is fairly mild, and many corpus hits express a negative attitude regarding fairly mundane issues:

(16) ‘Y

(17) ‘Her breath fanned his ear, warm and stirring.’ I must be mad, ‘he declared thickly’. ‘Because I love you, too.’ (COCA, 1994 FIC Bk:ProudFree)

As the majority of hits with mad, mental and crazy are quite similar, one would expect them to be treated in dictionaries in a similar manner. The corpus data suggests that these terms are not among the most offensive ones, and hence it is only to be expected that many dictionaries do not mention the negative attitude. In addition, the few labels applied to the terms in the dictionaries are disapproval in COBUILD, which is applied to many not so offensive terms, and a note in OALD claiming that mad and crazy are only insulting when referring to a mentally ill person.The note in OALD is likely to be partly accurate, but it should be

mentioned that the terms are usually not found when referring to such persons, and they are sometimes used with the intention to insult someone who does not have a mental illness.

Moreover, the corpus data of the three terms include examples of situations where the negative attitude is more emphatic:

(18) ‘Fucking stupid little [pause] don't think you can [pause] bloody fucking mad!’(BNC, KD7 3745)

(19) ‘[unclear] she's bloody mental, what's the point in saying that?’ (BNC, KCX 3780)

These types of occurrences may explain why EWE labels the extended senses of mad and mental with insult, and uses additional labels with their medical senses. There is one peculiarity in the labelling of these terms in EWE, which is that while the dictionary uses multiple labels with mad and mental, crazy has no labels at all, which itself is uncommon for EWE. However, the corpus data suggests that there are some differences in the use of mental and mad, and crazy: of the three terms, only crazy is used as a positive adjective relatively often, in the sense that someone is a wild and fun person. In BNC, these types of occurrences are often found in personal advertisements in a newspaper or a magazine, and in COCA, in varying contexts:

(20) MALE SPECIES ALERT! We're two funky 17-year-old gals searching for fun and action. If you're ready, willing and able, write now!! WANTED: TOTALLY CRAZY MALE PENFRIEND. Must like Prince, Bob Marley (or any kind of reggae or soul music), 16 Photo will be appreciated. Must like a good laugh and be fun to get on with. (BNC, HSJ 914)

(21) You can't be the cool, crazy chick anymore because the guys that were older than you are now playing with girls that are young enough to be their daughters, so you kind of slip into this gray period, you know, this gray thing (COCA, 2002, SPOK, Ind Oprah)

Another difference between the three terms is that while crazy and mad are very common, mental provides substantially less relevant hits in the corpora. This is probably related to the fact that mental is most often used in combinations such as “mental health”. Yet, COCA has very few hits of mental compared to BNC, which may be partly related to a geographical difference. In COCA, the ratio of relevant hits is one in a sample of 500 spoken language hits, and in BNC a similar search provided more than twenty hits. It seems that COBUILD and

OALD are correct in labelling the term as being British English, but surprisingly, none of the American works mention this. Nevertheless, it may be added that the use of mental is the only clear case of a geographical difference among all the terms, although many terms are labelled with geographical labels in the dictionaries.

7.1.7 Schizo

Schizo is labelled in three out of six dictionaries. In the two corpora, schizo provides a total of ten hits, and for that reason a comprehensive analysis of its use is not possible. Of the ten hits, all convey a disapproving attitude towards someone:

(22) ‘They threw me out,’ the boy said softly. ‘They said I wasn't any use to Them.’

‘No use? Hnh. What are you, a schizo?’

He shook his head. (BNC, BN1 117)

Many of the occurrences do not seem to be used as very grave insults, and in the following, for example, schizo is used to denote someone who changes their mind frequently:

(23) Well, in fairness to the moms, maybe we damsels have been a little schizo. First we wanted the dashing gestures, the affection and the caretaking. But then feminism arrived. (COCA, 2002 MAG TownCountry)

The dictionaries which label schizo are ChD, AHD and EWE. These are all general purpose dictionaries, but interestingly, the learner’s dictionaries which list the word do not label it.

Also, schizo is the only word labelled in ChD along with retard, and here the consistency in applying labels seems slightly dubious. When examining the corpus data, it is clear that there are many terms which are used in a more derogatory manner than schizo, but ChD does not label them. One of the reasons for this inconsistency may be that schizo is more slang-like than many other terms and is consequently thought as more likely to be found in offensive contexts. It it also possible that the search results for schizo in the corpora are not

representative enough, as the number of hits for schizo is small.