English
insane
Insane is borrowed from Latin īnsānus ‘unsound in mind, mad’, from in- + sānus ‘sound, sane’.
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEsānus1‘sound, sane’
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEīnsānus1‘unsound in mind, mad’
- Englishearliest quotation c. 1606insane1
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, English insane
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: c. 1606, William Shakespeare, The Tragedie of Macbeth: “Were such things here, as we doe speake about?…”.
Lineage
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEsānusWiktionary, English insane‘sound, sane’
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEīnsānusWiktionary, English insane‘unsound in mind, mad’
- Englishearliest quotation c. 1606insaneWiktionary, English insane. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: c. 1606, William Shakespeare, The Tragedie of Macbeth: “Were such things here, as we doe speake about?…”
Word family
English words that share an ancestor with insane, grouped by the ancestor they share, most familiar first.
through Proto-Indo-European *seh₂- ‘to satisfy’
- sad ← sæd ← *sadaz
- secular ← seculer ← seculer ← saeculāris ← saeculum
- saturation ← saturatio ← saturō ← satur
- hadron ← ἁδρός
- sade ← saden ← sadian ← *sadōn ← *sadaz
- insatiable ← insaciable ← insaciable ← insatiabilis ← satiābilis
- saturate ← saturat(e) ← saturātus ← saturō ← satur
- satiety ← satieté ← satietas ← satis ← *séh₂tis
- satiate ← satiātus ← satiō ← satis ← *séh₂tis
26 more relatives in the full family tree
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Today it means
adj Exhibiting unsoundness or disorder of mind; not sane; utterly mad.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “insane”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.
Etymograph / Latin sānus / insane