sea change

海啸般的变革

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

语言学习

2025-06-05

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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 5, 2025 is: sea change • SEE-CHAYNJ  • noun Sea change refers to a big and sudden change or transformation. // The early 2000s witnessed a sea change in public opinion about smoking in public places. See the entry > Examples: “Over the course of my grandmother’s lifetime, gender expectations for women underwent a sea change. My grandmother ended up pursuing an education and becoming a doctor, leading an independent life that made her mother proud.” — Wendy Chen, LitHub.com, 20 May 2024 Did you know? In The Tempest, William Shakespeare’s final play, sea change refers to a change brought about by the sea: the sprite Ariel, who aims to make Ferdinand believe that his father the king has perished in a shipwreck, sings within earshot of the prince, “Full fathom five thy father lies...; / Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / into something rich and strange.” This is the original, now-archaic meaning of sea change. Today the term is used for a distinctive change or transformation. Long after sea change gained this figurative meaning, however, writers continued to allude to Shakespeare’s literal one; Charles Dickens, Henry David Thoreau, and P.G. Wodehouse all used the term as an object of the verb suffer, but now a sea change is just as likely to be undergone or experienced.
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  • It's the Word of the Day podcast for June 5th.

  • Today's word is sea change, spelled as two words, S-E-A-C-H-A-N-G-E.

  • Sea change is a noun.

  • It refers to a big and sudden change or transformation.

  • Here's the word used in a sentence from lithub.com by Wendy Chen.

  • Over the course of my grandmother's lifetime,

  • gender expectations for women underwent a sea change.

  • My grandmother ended up pursuing an education and becoming a doctor,

  • leading an independent life that made her mother proud.

  • In The Tempest, Shakespeare's final play,

  • the term sea change refers to a change brought about by the sea.

  • The sprite Ariel, who aims to make Ferdinand believe that his father,

  • the king, has perished in a shipwreck, sings within earshot of the prince,

  • full fathom five thy father lies, nothing of him that doth fade,

  • but doth suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.

  • This is the original now archaic meaning of sea change.

  • Today, the term is used for a distinctive change or transformation.

  • Long after sea change gained this figurative meaning, however,

  • writers continued to allude to Shakespeare's literal one.

  • Dickens, Thoreau, and Woodhouse all used the term as an object of the verb suffer,