Berserk means wildly and violently out of control. Go berserk, went berserk, berserk with rage.
It nearly always appears in go berserk, which is used both seriously and jokingly — a machine can go berserk as easily as a person. The word comes from the berserkers, Norse warriors who fought in a trance-like frenzy, and who were said to wear bear-shirts, which is what the name probably means. Note berserker, which is now more a fantasy-fiction word than a historical one.
1adjectiveberserkWildly and violently out of control.
“The crowd went berserk when the band finally came on stage.”
synonyms: frenzied, wild
berserk is a state of frenzy.
Old Norse berserkr is probably bjorn, a bear, plus serkr, a shirt — a warrior in a bearskin. English took the word in the nineteenth century through Walter Scott's medievalism.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰerH- — brown
Old Norse
berserkr — Norse warrior who fights in a frenzy
English, today
berserk
Built from
The noun is borrowed from Old Norse berserkr (“Norse warrior who fights in a frenzy”), probably from bjǫrn (“bear”) + serkr (“coat; shirt”), referring to the bearskins which the warriors wore. Bjǫrn is possibly ultimately derived from Proto-Indo-European bʰerH- (“brown”); and serkr from Proto-Indo-European ser- (“to bind, tie together; thread”). Alternatively, it has been suggested that the first element of the word is from berr (“bare, naked”), referring to warriors who went into battle without armour, but this is now thought unlikely. a doublet of berserker. The adjective is derived from the noun. The verb might partly be a a back-formation from berserker, analyzed as containing the suffix -er.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire