To save this word, you'll need to log in. Bredbeck Nonstop one-liners, cartoon characters, pointless freneticism and a ridiculous denouement do not a mystery novel make. When life gets frenetic, things can seem absolutely insane - at least that seems to be what folks in the Middle Ages thought. Frenetik, in Middle English, meant "insane. Today its seriousness has been downgraded to something more akin to hectic. But if you trace frenetic back through Anglo-French and Latin, you'll find that it comes from Greek phrenitis, a term describing an inflammation of the brain. As for frenzied and frantic, they're not only synonyms of frenetic but relatives as well.
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It is here worth noticing that Siena, the city of civil discord, was also the city of frenetic piety. Everywhere was joy, gain, revelry; everywhere certainty of the morrow's bread; everywhere the frenetic outbursts of vitality. He had the unwholesome, frenetic aspect of the patent medicine enthusiast, not uncommon in the North.
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The whole scene looks like a frenetic burlesque show-themed bachelorette party. The meeting will cap a frenetic fundraising season for the conservative donor network. With alternating chapters, the novel takes us on a frenetic journey through the perspectives of these unlikely apocalyptos. To preserve the frenetic flavor of the scene, I have left in the interview a few of these interruptions. I don't quite understand how a city can be so sedate and frenetic at the same time, but somehow Los Angeles manages it.
Add frenetic to one of your lists below, or create a new one. Improve your vocabulary with English Vocabulary in Use from Cambridge. Learn the words you need to communicate with confidence. Beating up, ganging up on and putting someone down: phrasal verbs for bad behaviour 2.
