What type of concept is "mad scientist"?

Question

What is the category that "mad scientist" belongs to? I think "mad scientist" is a concept that is understood by every member of a particular culture, it puts the same image into all of our heads. What is the term for such concepts?

I was describing fictional characters to a non-English friend, and I said "he is a mad scientist wizard." My friend didn't understand: "mad about what?" I tried to describe that "mad scientist" is an established concept, and then my friend said "What's mad science?" I think any native would understand what is meant by "mad scientist wizard"; why is that? What type of phrase is "mad scientist"?

What can you call this kind of word that's understood only by members of a group? I think there's a more technical and more specific word than trope, cliché.

Answer 1

From a story telling perspective (and you are talking about fictional characters), this is a "trope".

Originally a trope was a unique or novel use of a word, to contrast it's meaning with a new usage.

noun: trope; plural noun: tropes a figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression. "both clothes and illness became tropes for new attitudes toward the self" a significant or recurrent theme; a motif. "she uses the Eucharist as a pictorial trope"

However over time the use of the term "trope" has evolved and now refers to common themes, motifs, or conventions in storytelling. It is used to describe recurrent plot devices, character types, or elements that appear across different works of art, literature, and media.

There's even a website TV Tropes dedicated to naming and explaining different tropes.

Here's the Mad Scientist entry on TV Tropes

NB TV Topes web site is a time sink, it can be hard to get back out once you've clicked on your first trope.

Answer 2

What type of concept is "mad scientist"?

It is a stereotype

OED

3.b. A preconceived and oversimplified idea of the characteristics which typify a person, situation, etc.; an attitude based on such a preconception. Also, a person who appears to conform closely to the idea of a type.

1948 The concept of stereotype..refers to two different things. (1)..a tendency for a given belief to be widespread in a society... (2)..a tendency for a belief to be oversimplified in content and unresponsive to the objective facts. D. Krech & R. S. Crutchfield, Theory & Problems of Social Psychology ii. v. 171

1968 American students of English-speaking backgrounds who are in the process of studying the French language have a generally negative set of stereotypes about the basic personality characteristics of French-speaking people. W. E. Lambert et al. in J. A. Fishman, Readings in Sociology of Language 487

Answer 3

The general term for a phrase that's understood by a community, even though the meaning is not the literal meaning of the words, is idiom. From M-W

an expression in the usage of a language that is peculiar to itself either in having a meaning that cannot be derived from the conjoined meanings of its elements (such as up in the air for "undecided") or in its grammatically atypical use of words (such as give way).

In this case, "mad scientist" refers to the stereotype of an "evil scientist", in popular culture, but the word "mad" has no literal implication of evilness.

Answer 4

Typical intersectivity is shown here, at least on the surface. I don't think anyone would argue with the equivalence

'Aloysius is a mad scientist'

=

'Aloysius is mad' and 'Aloysius is a scientist'.

Compare 'This is a valuable book'.

But 'He is a heavy smoker' is not equivalent to 'he is heavy' and 'he is a smoker'; only the second statement is necessarily true.

And 'he is a former president' certainly does not mean that he is still president, and 'he is former' makes no sense.

[Adjective] + [noun] phrases behave differently.

..........

A complication which the original example brings out nicely is that 'mad scientist' is at least a strong collocation ... though I wouldn't insist it was a compound. This means that it behaves to some degree (totally, for compounds) as a single element.

• He is a [mad scientist].

He is one of that recognised, stereotyped set, {mad scientists}.

With compounds, analysis is unfeasible:

• This is my walking stick.

It's not walking. It's a stick used to help one walk.

And, whether 'mad scientist' is a strong collocation or a compound, it's obviously ludicrous to associate 'mad' with 'science' rather than 'scientist'. There are of course high fliers (often hyphenated or solid), but asking what a high fly is would be in the crazy vein of Groucho Marx. And there are heavy drinkers, but I've never seen 'heavy drink' for sale. Light cruisers, but no such thing as a 'light cruise'. A sleeping partner doesn't have 'sleeping parts'. A criminal lawyer should certainly be well versed in criminal law, but the Lone Ranger didn't ride the 'lone range'. A day tripper takes day trips but an inveterate biker doesn't ride an inveterate bike. A cattle rancher owns a cattle ranch but a gentleman farmer doesn't own a gentleman farm. One has to be sensible in deciding what modifies what and what relates to what in such collocative noun phrases / compounds.

Answer 5

Your question - "What can you call this kind of word that's understood only by members of a group?"

The word you're looking for is jargon.

• the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group, e.g. sports jargon [MW]
• words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group of people, and are difficult for others to understand. [Oxford LD]

If you mean "that's only understood by native speakers of a certain language, in a certain place, then the answer is "dialect" or "idiom".

Answer 6

There are a lot of good answers here , I just want to add some more thoughts here.

The term "mad scientist" is a :

• metaphor
  -- It is a figure of speech ( in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity ) to say that X is a mad scientist

• simplification
  -- It is a simplification to say that X is a mad scientist , in a compact , less-wordy way

• abstraction
  -- The mad scientist is the conceptual abstraction ( or idea not associated with any specific instance ) where we imagine X becoming a guy with goggles in a white coat experimenting in a high-tech lab trying to dominate the world though scientific weaponry , not thinking about morals & ethics

• rhetorical device
  -- It is a rhetorical device to claim that X is a mad scientist , where we avoid lengthy descriptions , yet convey what we want to

There are other ways to cover this , like stereotype ( user Greybeard ) , idiom ( user Barmar ) , though I would go with "idiomatic expression" & "phrasal idiom" & "set phrase" , which the intended speakers/users/readers will know while outsiders will not know.

Answer 7

The Mad Scientist was first used in H.G. Wells story The Invisible Man. There a scientist had used strychninein in small doses as a stimulant. Not a good idea. This was the cause of his madness and eventual destruction. It has been used since as a means of obscuring the scientist's brilliance and to excuse his mistakes.