MAELSTROM • DICCIONARIO INGLES.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

... point of revising her estimate of the little actress. Was she, after all, wholly mercenary in her attitude toward Warrington? Was he merely a live spender whom she could not afford to lose? Or was she merely a beautiful, delicate creature caught in the merciless maelstrom of the life into which she had been thrown? Did she realize the perilous position this all was placing ...

— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve

... realized for some charity,—I forget what,—and the affair was voted highly successful. The next day, the 28th, we were creeping towards our harbor through one of those dense fogs which are more dangerous than the old rocks of the sirens, or Scylla and Charybdis, or the much-lied-about maelstrom. ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... Drunkenness finds a ship adrift,—no steady wind in its sails, no thoughtful pilot directing its course,— he steps on board, takes the helm, and steers straight for the maelstrom. ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... haunted this room before I let his words creep much beyond my ears. I had a brother who needed all my care and all my affection, and I did not mean to marry, much less to love. But slowly and by degrees he got a hold upon my heart, and then, like the wretch who trusts himself to the maelstrom, I was swept round and round into the whirlpool of passion till not earth nor heaven could save me or make me again the free and light-hearted girl I was. This was two years ...

— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green

... turned out as the saint had foretold, and after a long day's march they encountered the Jesuit and became Christians. *7* This account seems to have been lost, and a careful search has not disinterred it from the Maelstrom of Simancas, that prison-house of so many documents, without whose aid so much of Spanish ...

— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

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