fēng
adjective HSK 5 #511

Meanings

  1. 1 insane; mad; crazy
  2. 2 to go crazy; to become mentally deranged
  3. 3 wild; unrestrained

Examples

Nǐ fēng le ma?
Are you crazy?
Tā kuài bèi zhè jiàn shì bīfēng le.
He's being driven crazy by this.
粉丝们一样尖叫
Fěnsīmen fēng le yīyàng de jiānjiào.
The fans screamed like crazy.
Bié fēng le, kuài huílái!
Stop being crazy, come back!

Tips

usage
is very colloquial. is one of the most common expressions of disbelief. It's not as offensive as calling someone 'insane' in English - more like 'are you nuts?'
usage
疯子 = madman/crazy person, 发疯 = to go crazy, 疯狂 = frenzied/wild.

Components

radical
sickness (radical)
Sickness radical (Kangxi #104) - depicts a bed propped at an angle with a sick person leaning against it. Indexes in the disease family with , , , , . The radical sets the meaning of firmly in pathology: madness was understood in classical thought as an illness of the spirit, not a moral failing - hence the medical anchor.
phonetic
fēng
wind
Inside supplies the sound (fēng, exact match) and a vivid image. was traditionally believed to be the carrier of madness in classical Chinese medicine - an evil 'wind disease' that entered the body and disturbed the mind. The combination is therefore semantic as well as phonetic: a 'wind illness' = madness, the original concept of .

Stroke Order

fēng