mayhem.

1. Wild disorder in which people, activities, or events seem out of control.

2. Destructive or violent activity that causes damage, injury, or serious disruption.

3. Deliberately causing a lasting injury that seriously disables or disfigures another person, or the offense of doing so.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• complete mayhem
• cause mayhem
• mayhem breaks out

On the page

Three coaches arrived at once, creating mayhem outside the small hotel.

Breakfast became complete mayhem when the dog escaped with a tray of toast.

The gang left a trail of mayhem through the shopping district.

The film examines the human cost of the mayhem rather than treating every explosion as entertainment.

The charge of mayhem concerned the lasting injury, not the disorder in the street.

Usage notes

Usually uncountable: mayhem, complete mayhem, a great deal of mayhem; not normally a mayhem. Mayhems is dictionary-listed for separate instances but is not the ordinary everyday form. No verb forms are assigned. Pronunciation: /ˈmeɪ.hem/ — MAY-hem. Register: neutral. Commonness: moderately common in general writing; legal sense specialized (dictionary-informed qualitative editorial estimate; not a measured frequency).