MAELSTROM • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Maelstrom

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/mˈeɪlstrəm/ Listen

noun

Maelstrom n.

A celebrated whirlpool on the coast of Norway. Hence: Any large or powerful whirlpool.

Synonyms: whirlpool, vortex.

Also (Fig.) An uncontrollable agitated or confusedly disordered state or situation; as, a maelstrom of vice.

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Etymology of 'Maelstrom'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Maelstrom" Quotes from Famous Books

... time Miss Paul and Miss Burns returned from England, where they had been studying and doing social welfare work and had been caught in the maelstrom of the "militant" suffrage movement, then at its height. Both had taken part in demonstrations before the House of Commons and been sent to prison and they came back to the United States filled with zeal to ...

— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... that the passion of the American people for learning and for antiquity is a slight and accidental thing? Does any one believe that the taste for imitation old furniture is a pose? It creates an eddy in the Maelstrom of Commerce. It is a power like Niagara, and represents the sincere appreciation of half educated people for second rate things. There is here nothing to be ashamed of. In fact there is everything to be proud ...

— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman

... reprobation of several public critics; some correspondents favoured me with their anonymous scurrility, and some bigots relieved me of their acquaintance. On the other hand, there were people who, in the midst of a maelstrom of passion, ...

— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... conscience' sake" and "in the sweete peace of God," he left England and threw in his lot with the young colony in Massachusetts Bay. At twenty-three he was {274} Governor of the Colony and found himself plunged into a maelstrom of politics, Indian wars, and ecclesiastical quarrels which would have tried even a veteran like John Winthrop. It was here in Massachusetts that the lines of his religious thought first come clearly into ...

— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... steady current free of rock, and down this—head and shoulders still high out of the water—came the colt! What miracle had saved the little fellow thus far Aldous did not stop to ask. Fifty yards below it would meet the fate of the others. Half that distance in the direction of the maelstrom below was the dead trunk of a fallen spruce overhanging the water for fifteen or twenty feet. In a flash Aldous was racing toward it. He climbed out on it, leaned far over, and reached down. His hand touched the water. In the grim excitement ...

— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood

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