maelstrom
noun
Harper's
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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.
Examples of maelstrom in a Sentence
Bennett Durando, Denver Post, 1 Apr. 2025
Into this maelstrom steps Simmons with a job to correct earlier errors, to prevent new questionable acquisitions and to ensure that the museum’s reputation for integrity and scholarship is not further damaged.
—Graham Bowley, New York Times, 18 Mar. 2025
In the maelstrom of this fierce collision, the particles in the winds from the two stars collide, compress into clumps and ultimately cool, allowing carbon-rich dust just millionths of a meter in size to form.
—Keith Cooper, Space.com, 16 Jan. 2025
We are caught up in a political maelstrom, and yet the effect is startlingly intimate.
—Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor, 16 Jan. 2025
See All Example Sentences for maelstrom
Cite this Entry
“Maelstrom.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/maelstrom. Accessed 23 Apr. 2025.
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maelstrom
noun
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