Ferwode

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Wildly angry or frenzied, as a person who has lost all self-control in a rage
2. Describing someone raging with madness or fury, beside themselves with violent anger
3. Characterizing a state of furious, unrestrained passion bordering on madness in an archaic English sense

Etymology: "Ferwode" is a Middle English word meaning "furious" or "raging mad," and it is built on the old word "wod," which meant "mad" or "frenzied" in Old English. That older sense survives in the modern "wood" as in "like a wood," meaning crazed, and in the Old Norse cognate "odr" (poetic "wild" or "frenzied"). The "wod" element is also related to German "wut," meaning rage. The prefix "fer-" is less certain. It may be an intensifier, adding force to "wod," but the exact source of the prefix is not settled in the standard references, so its origin should be treated as uncertain. The word is attested mainly in Middle English texts, where it appears in verse and romance, and it went out of use before the modern period.