Meaning
Displaying erratic behaviour
Etymology
Origin: Ancient Greek
From Italian matto (“insane”) + -oid (“likeness or resemblance”), from Ancient Greek εἶδος (eîdos, “form”) more First appeared in English in 1891 through a translation of the nineteenth-century Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso's work, Man of Genius. H G Wells used it in several of his books, most notably in Mankind in the Making of 1903, in which he derides the theories of Lombroso and the Victorian phrenologists: “Among such theorists none at present are in quite such urgent need of polemical suppression as those who would persuade the heedless general reader that every social failure is necessarily a ‘degenerate’, and who claim boldly that they can trace a distinctly evil and mischievous strain in that unfortunate miscellany which constitutes ‘the criminal class’... These mattoid scientists make a direct and disastrous attack upon the latent self-respect of criminals.”
NYT Puzzle Appearances
No published puzzle dates on file for this word yet. It is part of the official NYT Spelling Bee word list for 2021, 2023, 2024.