a. [f. BRAIN sb. + SICK.]

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  1.  Diseased in the brain or mind; addle-headed, mad, foolish, frantic.

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1483.  Caxton, G. de la Tour, xiv. 20. Nor foles that are brayne sik.

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1549.  Latimer, Serm. bef. Edw. VI. (Arb.), 84. What ye brain-sycke fooles … do ye beleue hym?

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1648.  Hunting of Fox, 25. Some head-strong brain-sick Sectaries.

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1733.  Swift, Legion Club, Wks. 1755, IV. I. 206. A queer Brain-sick brute, they call a peer.

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1848.  Macaulay, Hist. Eng., I. 591. This man, at once unprincipled and brainsick.

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  † b.  as sb. Obs.

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1606.  Sylvester, Du Bartas, I. iv. Wks. (Grosart), 150 (D.). Some brainsicks liue there now-a-daies.

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  2.  Of things: Proceeding from a diseased mind.

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1571.  Golding, Calvin on Ps., viii. 3. With braynsik madnesse.

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1790.  Cowper, Odyss., IV. 616. The brainsick fury seiz’d him.

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1856.  R. Vaughan, Mystics (1860), I. 278. The spasmodic movements of a brainsick disinterestedness.

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  Hence Brainsickly a. and adv., Brainsickness.

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1605.  Shaks., Macb., II. ii. 46. To thinke So braine-sickly of things.

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1823.  Blackw. Mag., XIII. 415. I am not so brain-sickly as to dwell on gloomy reverie.

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1541.  Paynell, Catiline, xxxv. 54. Wherto shuld we reherse the furious brain-syckenes of Cethegus?

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