ppl. a. [f. prec.]
1. Thrown into confusion; unsettled, disordered.
1719. De Foe, Crusoe, II. (Globe), 509. I might by my loose and unhing’d Circumstances be the fitter to embrace a Proposal for Trade.
1778. Pringle, Gunnery, 23. The unhinged state of this part of the mixed mathematics.
1835. Marryat, Olla Podr., i. 5. Society is unhinged, and every one is afraid to offer an opinion.
1811. Chalmers, Lett., in Life (1851), I. 243. The moral constitution of our nature is unhinged.
1895. J. A. Noble, in Contemp. Rev., April, 490. A person whose intellectual, moral, or emotional sanity was unhinged.
b. spec. Of persons or the mind.
1732. J. Whaley, Poems, 213. Shall the Mind lie unhing’d by each mad flight?
1757. Foote, Author, I. Last winter … I cou’d have made as good a speech upon any subject,… but I am all unhinged, all.
1811. Lamb, Shaks. Trag., Wks. 1908, I. 131. Tokens of an unhinged mind.
1836. Marryat, Japhet, xxx. I never felt more nervous or more unhinged.
2. Deprived of hinges; taken off the hinges.
1824. W. Irving, T. Trav., I. 14. The eyelid drooped and hung down like an unhinged window-shutter.
1824. Galt, Rothelan, II. IV. iv. 130. Bearing the corpse of a man on an unhinged door.
