Meaning of sea change | Babel Free

Definitions

A profound transformation; a metamorphosis.

idiomatic

Equivalents

Examples

“Public opinion has undergone a sea change⟳ since the 2002 elections.”

“A few days wrought, as it were, a magical "sea change⟳" in everything around us. The late dark and angry sea, lashed up into roaring and swashing surges, became calm and sunny; the rude winds died away; and gradually a light⟳ breeze sprang up directly aft.”

“His [Frederick Marryat's] last⟳ work⟳, ‘Percival Keane’ (1842), betrays no falling-off, but, on the contrary, is one of the most vigorous and interesting of his ‘sea changes.’”

“[S]uddenly, a "sea change⟳" came over his features, […]”

“Assuredly the fine old North Carolinan [William Alexander Graham], who has meanwhile himself gone under politically, as little anticipated while penning this sententious answer⟳ the "sea-change" as the sectional one which was to come⟳ after him. A "sea-change" has indeed transpired.”

“It is interesting to watch⟳ how the most unpromising subject seems to warm and assimilate with his [John Randolph of Roanoke's] genius. Everything undergoes a seachange.”

“Is it possible that our sense⟳ of humor has already undergone a sea-change? […] [T]he book as a whole seems strangely antiquated.”

“There are other worlds than ours, and we never again return⟳ to the old place⟳, because we have⟳ suffered not only a sea-change but a soul-change.”

“Anthony Starkweather. […] Essentially a moral man, his rigid New England morality has suffered a sea change⟳ and developed into the morality of the master-man of affairs, equally rigid, equally uncompromising, but essentially Jesuitical in that he believes in doing wrong that right may come⟳ of it.”

“On the right, emerging from the social sciences, is a position that identifies the recent sea changes in Eastern Europe and the USSR, the longer-term global shifts toward internationalisation and the collapse of movement politics of various kinds as calling into question⟳ the continuing relevance of the neo Marxist 'motor' of cultural studies.”

“New economic, social and international pressures were threatening a seachange in the language of politics, with more activism sought from government than in the laissez-faire nineteenth century.”

“Don't be swayed by minor setbacks: Don't confuse⟳ minor shifts with sea-changes. A bump in the road can—and should—be navigated without making major route changes.”

“There has been a sea change⟳ in the language used to describe⟳ post-Roman times. Words like⟳ ‘decline⟳’ and ‘crisis’, which suggest⟳ problems at the end⟳ of the empire and which were quite usual into the 1970s, have⟳ largely disappeared from historians’ vocabularies, to be replaced by neutral terms, like⟳ ‘transition’, ‘change⟳’, and ‘transformation’.”

“A sea change⟳ is under way. It used to be that when a man spoke, people listened; and when a woman spoke, her credentials were questioned, appearance found lacking, and message dismissed. Not. Any. More.”

“The catalyst was the introduction of the Health & Safety at Work⟳ Act in 1974. While it applied to all workplaces, it gradually brought about a sea change⟳ in the attitude towards death and injury. Accidents were no longer accepted as 'inevitable'.”

CEFR level