Definition of "madding" [mad•ding]

• Archaic In a state of frenzy; frenzied: "far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife” ( Thomas Gray). (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "No one could accuse his crosswords of blushing unseen – not even when they were exiled to a distant outpost in the travel section for a few years – but the poem was more fitting than he knew: "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,/Their sober wishes never learned to stray,/Along the cool sequester'd vale of life/They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.""
• "Elsewhere in the Observer the madding crowd strives away like billy-o, just as it did in the days of Richard Nixon and Reginald Maudling, but for those needing a refuge from the weekly din there's still the cool sequester'd vale inhabited by Azed."
• "Radio 5 Live has been excelling itself with some reflective features far from the madding crowd of its usual breathless hurly-burly."