frenzy

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)A state of wild activity or panic.

   “international media frenzy”

   “She went into a cleaning frenzy to prepare for the unexpected guests.”

   “It is during these frenzies that sharks have been known to bite everything in sight, including other sharks engaged in the same activity.”

   “At the very end of the Middle Ages, Breughel depicted country folk wrapped up in fits of mass hysteria, and the historical accounts of these rural frenzies have explained the delirium in terms of the slender diet on which the poor had to subsist during the hungry gap.”

   “The early years of Norman occupation saw a frenzy of castle building.”

2. (countable, uncountable)A violent agitation of the mind approaching madness; rage.

   “The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling.”

   “All else is towering frenzy and distraction.”

   “He proffered a pact to Satan, calling upon the Fiend and working himself into a frenzy - but his infernal majesty failed to respond.”

adj

1. (obsolete)Mad; frantic.

   “They thought that some frenzy distemper had got into his head.”

verb

1. (uncommon)To render frantic.

   “Both goaded on to strife by frenzying hate.”

   “Then there is the absorbing, not to say frenzying, interest, which attends our important elections.”

2. (rare)To exhibit a frenzy, such as a feeding frenzy.

   “The fresh smell of salt air, the sound of the crashing swell, the soothing immersion in the water, the sight of dolphins playing and fish frenzying beneath my board.”