maelstrom
noun
Harper's
Did you know?
The original Maelstrom, also known as the Mostenstraumen or Moskstraumen, is a channel located off the northwest coast of Norway that has dangerous tidal currents. English speakers became familiar with its (often exaggerated) perils through literature—Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story called “A Descent into the Maelstrom,” and Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea has—spoiler alert—a maelstrom at its climax. The English word arrived by way of the Dutch word maelstrom, which today is spelled maalstroom. (The Dutch word combines the verb malen, meaning “to grind,” and the noun strom, “stream.”) English speakers have applied the word to any powerful whirlpool since the 16th century, and by the 19th century they’d begun to apply it figuratively to things or situations resembling such maelstroms in turbulence or confusion.
Examples of maelstrom in a Sentence
Assaf Orion, Foreign Affairs, 12 Sep. 2024
The 2024 San Francisco Giants are a hot mess, a maelstrom of injuries, disappointments and tantalizing hints of something better that’s just out of reach.
—Grant Brisbee, The Athletic, 23 July 2024
An hour’s drive from Abubakar’s office, through a maelstrom of Lagos traffic, sits the Katangua dumpsite, a sprawling, teeming maze of tiny workshops, scrapyards, wrecking zones, and slums, loosely built around a mountain of trash at least 20 feet tall.
—Vince Beiser, WIRED, 30 Nov. 2024
All in all, political players need to think mindfully about instituting generative AI in a political debate maelstrom, no matter what route is chosen.
—Lance Eliot, Forbes, 15 Oct. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Maelstrom.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/maelstrom. Accessed 22 Dec. 2024.
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maelstrom
noun
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