Word of the Day

: November 4, 2023

maelstrom

noun MAIL-strum

What It Means

A maelstrom is a powerful often violent whirlpool that sucks in objects within a given radius. Maelstrom is also often used figuratively to refer to a situation resembling the turbulence of a maelstrom, as when there are a lot of confused activities, emotions, etc.

// He was caught in a maelstrom of emotions after the news he received over the phone.

// The ship was drawn into the maelstrom.

See the entry >

maelstrom in Context

“Innovation can be a crushing force—a physical and emotional juggernaut that can redefine entire sectors, societies, and civilizations in its inexorable path. As we peer into the maelstrom of technology’s ever-expanding possibilities—clinging to what guardrails we may find—the question that emerges is not just about what awaits us but about when. Timing, as they say, is everything.” — John Nosta, Psychology Today, 22 Sept. 2023

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.