different between moonstruck vs mooncalf

English

moon +? struck. Compare German Low German maansüchtig, German mondsüchtig.

moonstruck (comparative more moonstruck, superlative most moonstruck)

(obsolete) Crazy or insane when affected by the phases of the Moon.
(by extension) Showing irrational behaviour, especially of a romantic or sentimental nature.
- 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lectures 4 & 5:
  [W]e can also overlook the verbiage of a good deal of the mind-cure literature, some of which is so moonstruck with optimism and so vaguely expressed that an academically trained intellect finds it almost impossible to read it at all.
- 1925, Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith, Chapter 21, IV:
  The full moon was spacious now behind the maples. The seedy Pickerbaugh domain was enchanted […] and over all the world was the proper witchery of moonstruck love.
(obsolete) Made sick, or (like fishes) unsuitable for food, by the supposed influence of the Moon.

From moon +? calf, after a superstition that the moon caused abnormal fetal development.

mooncalf (plural mooncalves)

(now rare) An abnormal mass within the uterus; a false conception. [from 16th c.]
- c. 1611, William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act II, Scene 2,^[1]
  Thou art very Trinculo indeed! How camest thou to be the siege of this moon-calf? Can he vent Trinculos?
A poorly-conceived idea or plan. [from 17th c.]
A dreamer, someone absent-minded or distracted; a fool, simpleton. [from 17th c.]
- 1902, John Kendrick Bangs, Olympian Nights, New York: Harper & Bros., Chapter 10, p. 185,^[2]
  “ […] you’re a jobbernowl and a doodle, a maundering mooncalf and a blockheaded numps, a gaby and a loon; you’re a Hatter!” I shrieked the last epithet.
- 1957, Ogden Nash, “Come On In, The Senility Is Fine” in You Can’t Get There From Here, Boston: Little, Brown & Co., p. 66,^[3]
  But I can think of no one but a mooncalf or a gaby
  Who would trust their own child to raise a baby.
- 1978, Lawrence Durrell, Livia, Faber & Faber, 1992 (Avignon Quintet), p. 463,
  He slipped it softly onto her unresisting finger and, like the unwise moncalf he was, kissed it.

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