China Syndrome

noun

: meltdown sense 1

Examples of China Syndrome in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

But pictures like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The China Syndrome, and Falling Down — these were all [about] issues. — Jordan Hoffman, EW.com, 19 July 2025

Remember Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas in The China Syndrome driving a stake through the heart of the global nuclear industry? — Clem Chambers, Forbes, 10 Oct. 2024

Originally, 1979’s China Syndrome was going to star Richard Dreyfuss, fresh from his star-making turn in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the alien epic Steven Spielberg had made for Columbia in 1977. — Stacey Wilson Hunt, The Hollywood Reporter, 2 Aug. 2024

This increased after the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, which caused no loss of life but coincided with the release of The China Syndrome, a blockbuster film featuring an utterly unrealistic nuclear meltdown. — Armond Cohen, Foreign Affairs, 3 Nov. 2021

The reactor design avoids the type of fuel rods that gave us the fictional meltdown in The China Syndrome and the real-life ones in Chernobyl and Fukushima. — IEEE Spectrum, 14 June 2021

Word History

Etymology

from the notion that the molten reactor contents could hypothetically sink through the earth to reach China

First Known Use

1970, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for China Syndrome

• nucleosome
• trypanosome
• acrosome
• aerodrome
• catacomb
• centrosome
• chromosome
• cytochrome
• hippodrome
• honeycomb
• liposome
• meerschaum