A person who is insane or mentally ill, especially someone from Bedlam Hospital; a madman.
From Bedlam + the suffix -ite (meaning 'one who belongs to'). This term emerged in the 16th-17th centuries to refer to patients of Bedlam Hospital and became a general term for a mad person.
In Shakespeare's plays and Elizabethan literature, 'bedlamite' was a specific type of character—the 'Tom o' Bedlam'—a madman who wandered the countryside singing wild ballads and begging.
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