Word of the Day

: February 18, 2011

mayhem

noun MAY-hem

What It Means

1 : willful and permanent crippling, mutilation, or disfigurement of any part of the body and especially deprivation of a bodily member

2 : needless or willful damage or violence

mayhem in Context

"A 22-year-old Salt Lake man was charged Wednesday with felony mayhem for allegedly biting off a piece of another man's nose, court documents state." -- From an article by Amy Joi O'Donoghue in the Deseret News (Salt Lake City, Utah), January 19, 2011

"Forty-one people were arrested in the mayhem after the Montreal Canadiens' Game 7 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins. Some stores were looted and police fired tear gas at hundreds of bottle-throwers." -- From an article by the Associated Press, May 13, 2010

Did You Know?

Legally speaking, mayhem refers to the gruesome crime of deliberately causing an injury that permanently disfigures another. The name derives via Middle English from the Anglo-French verb "maheimer" ("to maim") and is probably of Germanic origin; our own verb "to maim" comes from the same ancestor. The disfigurement sense first appeared in English in the 15th century. By the 19th century the word had come to mean any kind of violent behavior; nowadays, "mayhem" can be used to suggest any kind of chaos or disorder, as in, "there was mayhem in the streets during the citywide blackout."