I had no idea that the word was actually a medieval legal term for intentionally damaging or destroying the limb of another person, basically a form of “maiming” - check out the definition below and please accept this as a second cop-out post for the week as I have to rush to complete a short screenplay for a 2 day competition this weekend, as well as catch up on story materials for the show I’m working on, and complete episode two of a podcast series. Ya yoy.
Legally speaking, mayhem refers to the gruesome crime of deliberately causing an injury that permanently disfigures another. The name derives via Middle English from the Anglo-French verb maheimer ("to maim") and is probably of Germanic origin; the English verb maim comes from the same ancestor. The disfigurement sense of mayhem first appeared in English in the 15th century. By the 19th century the word had come to mean any kind of violent behavior; nowadays, mayhem can be used to suggest any kind of chaos or disorder, as in "there was mayhem in the streets during the citywide blackout."