out of your mind

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

an idiom with two related but distinct meanings: first, crazy or irrational — you must be out of your mind to quit a stable job in this economy — and second, intensely preoccupied or distracted, having one's attention so fully captured by something that one is mentally absent from the present situation; in the first sense the idiom suggests that the speaker's behaviour or proposal is so extreme or foolish as to suggest they have lost contact with rational thought — their mind has wandered so far from sensible judgment as to be effectively absent; in the second sense it describes the state of absorption that accompanies extreme worry, grief, or intense emotional preoccupation — she was out of her mind with worry all night; the idiom joins a large family of English expressions linking mental sanity to spatial metaphors of being inside or outside the mind, including out of one's senses, beside oneself, and not in one's right mind