schizophrenic

[ skit-suh-fren-ik ]

adjective

1. Psychiatry. of or relating to schizophrenia:

   Not all of these patients are schizophrenic.

2. of or relating to conflicting or inconsistent elements; characterized by unusual disparity:

   It wavers from comedy to thriller to docudrama—a totally schizophrenic plot!

noun

, Psychiatry.

1. a person with schizophrenia:

   Schizophrenics are often unable to focus on certain objects.

Word History and Origins

Origin of schizophrenic¹

First recorded in 1910–15; schizophren(ia) ( def ) + -ic ( def )

Example Sentences

Paranoid schizophrenic, chemical imbalance, with acute psychotic episodes, and she didn’t know that I had to be hospitalized.

From Time

They show up when a schizophrenic man is setting fires to his neighbor’s furniture, and when a 13-year-old finds her father hanging from a basement pipe.

From Washington Post

Meanwhile, back in London, Olivia’s adoptive father starts to wonder if a new schizophrenic patient might be his daughter’s long-lost twin brother.

From Washington Post

Public defenders, however, produced mental health and criminal records from New Mexico showing that Moore had been diagnosed much earlier in life as a paranoid schizophrenic.

From Voice of San Diego

Turning from biblical interpretation to psychiatry, the actor added, “I think the man was likely schizophrenic.”

From The Daily Beast

In North Carolina, they let a 54-year-old untreated schizophrenic die of thirst after 35 days in solitary confinement.

From The Daily Beast

The anecdotes all reveal something uncomfortably schizophrenic about our world…but even so: what has gotten into this woman?

From The Daily Beast

When it comes to environmental protection, the Obama administration has seemed nothing less than schizophrenic.

From The Daily Beast

What if Charlize Theron was brought in to do a remake of the Sally Field schizophrenic classic Sybil?

From The Daily Beast

He begins jabbering like a schizophrenic parrot reading a Sanskrit dictionary backward!

From Project Gutenberg

I am (to state it in politically incorrectly language) a schizophrenic.

From Project Gutenberg

Therapeutic running also seems to benefit schizophrenic patients.

From Project Gutenberg

There are good reasons for believing specific schizophrenic thought-disturbance to be the result of a complex.

From Project Gutenberg

Like the schizophrenic, Martin was living in a little world that was cut off from the actual physical world around his body.

From Project Gutenberg