08 April 2026

Word for the day: deranged

It's a word most people recognize and vaguely understand, but I was curious about the etymology.
From French déranger, from Old French desrengier (“throw into disorder”), from des- + rengier (“to put into line”), from reng (“line, row”), from a Germanic source. See rank (noun).
Coming from the French is what left it out of my wheelhouse.  But it makes sense - disrupting a rank, creating disorder.



The Google Ngram viewer for usage in books shows several generations of quietude followed by a rise in recent decades.  I suspect once the 2025-26 data is entered that there will be an upward spike.  If there is an equivalent tool for monitoring usage in blogs and social media, I should think the numbers will have gone parabolic this year.

The synonyms are pretty familiar -


- and the idioms are perhaps more fun to peruse:

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