Doolally
adj, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Eccentric; insane, mad. Ireland, UK, slang
""Will you write me an Essay on Corsets?" / "On what?" I asked incredulously—knowing that he had been a distinguished soldier, and suspecting that he had suddenly developed what the soldiers describe as "a touch of the doolally.""
- 2 Carried away by enjoyment, excitement, etc. Ireland, UK, broadly, slang
"You are there to entertain. Education is something we like doing. That's not actually the biggest thing on the night, when people are queuing to get in and paying their money. They want to go doolally to their favourite records."
Example
More examples""Will you write me an Essay on Corsets?" / "On what?" I asked incredulously—knowing that he had been a distinguished soldier, and suspecting that he had suddenly developed what the soldiers describe as "a touch of the doolally.""
Etymology
From doolally tap (“camp fever; (by extension) eccentricity; madness”), with doolally interpreted as an adjective. Doolally is derived from the Deolali transit camp, a former British army camp about 100 miles (160 kilometres) northeast of Bombay, India, used as a transit station for soldiers awaiting transport back to Britain; while tap (“Indian malarial fever”) is from Persian or Urdu تب (tab, “malarial fever”), ultimately from Sanskrit ताप (tāpa, “fever; heat; pain, torment”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.