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Careen and Career
Some people might be confused by the warning to not confuse careen and career, because the most common sense of career ("a profession") is not much like any of the meanings of careen. But when employed as a verb, career does have some semantic overlap with careen; both words may be used to mean "to go at top speed especially in a headlong manner." A car, for instance, may either careen or career. Some usage guides hold, however, that the car is only careening if there is side-to-side motion, as careen has other meanings related to movement, among which is "to sway from side to side."
Examples of careen in a Sentence
Kerry Breen
may 30, CBS News, 30 May 2025
In 1902, another Caribbean volcano eruption sent a deadly mix of hot gas and ash and rock careening through a nearby city at 300 miles an hour, killing 27,000 people.
—Byrd Pinkerton, Vox, 16 May 2025
Doerr, meanwhile, creates a tender kind of suspense, alive and surprising and hopeful without careening into schmaltz.
—Los Angeles Times, 14 Apr. 2025
Here, Josh O’Connor plays J.B. Mooney (what a name!), an art thief who falls down a hole of his own digging, as a poorly hatched job to rip off a series of Arthur Dove abstract paintings from a fictional Massachusetts museum sends his private and family lives careening out of his grasp.
—Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire, 23 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for careen
Cite this Entry
“Careen.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/careen. Accessed 17 Jun. 2025.
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