musth

noun

1. (also, attributive, uncountable)Chiefly preceded by in or on: the state each year during which a male animal (usually a camel or an elephant) exhibits increased aggressiveness and sexual activity due to a high level of testosterone.

   “No animal in the world is so dangerous as an elephant in must.”

   “I couldn't see the driver, and across my mind it rushed / That the Commissariat elephant had suddenly gone musth.”

   “I have seen men deal with enraged elephants and live; but never was man yet born of woman that met my lord the elephant in his musth and lived to tell of the taming.”

   “Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the 'phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it? […] It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which had gone "must". It had been chained up, as tame elephants always are when their attack of "must" is due, but on the previous night it had broken its chain and escaped.”

2. (countable)An instance of this.