take leave of one's senses

take leave of one's senses

1. (idiomatic) To go crazy; to stop behaving rationally.
   • 1868, Wilkie Collins, chapter 1, in The Moonstone:

     Here I am, with my book and my pencil—the latter not pointed so well as I could wish, but when Christians take leave of their senses, who is to expect that pencils will keep their points?.

   • 1880, Henry Adams, chapter 10, in Democracy: An American Novel:

     She plainly said that men seemed to take leave of their senses as soon as women were concerned.

   • 1920, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 3, in Further Chronicles of Avonlea:

     "Rachel Spencer, have you taken leave of your senses? What do you mean by such nonsense as this?"

   • 2005 May 8, Nancy Gibbs, "Midlife Crisis? Bring It On!," Time:

     Sue Shellenbarger was 49, living in Oregon and writing her "Work & Family" column for the Wall Street Journal, when in the space of two years she got divorced, lost her father, drained her bank account and developed a taste for wilderness camping and ATV riding that left her crumpled up on an emergency-room gurney. "People around me thought I'd taken leave of my senses," she says.

   • 2007, HRH The Prince of Wales, The Elements of Organic Gardening, Kales Press, page 7:

     One of the great difficulties associated with the adoption of organic or, perhaps more appropriately, sustainable principles at the time I started turned out to be convincing others that you had not taken complete leave of your senses.