Wouldn't this mean "a headlong rush rush"?

I thought about that myself, JakeChance, when I did my "Gadarene" ALAD this morning.

Merrima-Webster defines "gadarene" thus:

HEADLONG, PRECIPITATE <a gadarene rush to the cities
gad·a·rene [ gáddə rn ]

And from Encarta, we get:

fast and without thinking: rushing headlong en masse (literary )

In both cases, "gadarene" is an adjective.

Note that Anu describes "gadarene" in his AWAD as a noun, but Anu is confusing the noun "Gadarene" with the adjective "gadarene".

Dictionary.com shows "Gadarene" [with a capital "G"] as an alternate form of the place name "Gadara".*

One doesn't have to couple the adjective "gadarene" with the noun "rush" although that coupling appears to be ubiquitous.

One could say "The retreat was gadarene" meaning it was "fast and unthinking".

Or one could say "a gadarene plunge", for instance, "a gadaren plunge into chaos".

Therefore, it seems "gadarene" describes the character of the "rush", namely, a "rush" which is "fast and unthinking". It is not the "rush" itself.

The confusion arises because, for some reason, all the dictionaries couple the adjective "gadarene" with the noun "rush" in the definition of "gadarene" or in their example of usage.

I used "gadarene rush" in my ALAD this morning because the two words seem to be locked together in common usage and "gadarene push" would have sounded awkward.

Besides, "push" doesn't rhyme with "rush". :)

* Dictionary.com Gad·a·ra

An ancient city of Palestine southeast of the Sea of Galilee. It was one of the Greek cities of the Decapolis.

Gada·rene (gd-rn, gd-rn) adj. & n.

NOTE: Dictionary.com identifies "Gadarene" with a capital "G" as an "adj. & n." but it does not define the adjective. And it doesn't identify the adjective as a separate word without the capital "G".