sea change
noun
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In William Shakespeare's The Tempest, a sea change is a change brought about by the sea, as illustrated by the words of the sprite Ariel to Ferdinand, said to make the prince believe that his father has perished in a shipwreck: "Full fathom five thy father lies...; / Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / into something rich and strange." This meaning of sea change is the original one, but it's now archaic. Long after sea change had gained its figurative meaning—that of any marked or permanent transformation—writers nonetheless continued to allude to Shakespeare's literal one; Charles Dickens, Henry David Thoreau, and P.G. Wodehouse all used the term as an object of the verb suffer, but now a sea change is just as likely to be undergone or experienced.
Examples of sea change in a Sentence
Tim Grierson, Los Angeles Times, 4 June 2024
At the annual trade show in Taipei, Qualcomm’s keynote felt both symbolic and a sea change, since the PC industry in Taiwan has long built computers around the x86 architecture from Intel and AMD.
—Michael Kan, PCMAG, 4 June 2024
An uptick in demand for meteorology expertise in finance has accompanied sea changes across the field more generally over the past few decades.
—Sasha Rogelberg, Fortune, 2 June 2024
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Chinese computing underwent multiple sea changes.
—IEEE Spectrum, 28 May 2024
See all Example Sentences for sea change 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sea change.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near sea change
Cite this Entry
“Sea change.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sea%20change. Accessed 10 Jun. 2024.
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