turmoil
English
Etymology
Unknown origin. Perhaps from Old French tremouille (“the hopper of a mill”).
Pronunciation
- (UK) IPA(key): /ˈtɜːmɔɪl/
Audio (US) (file)
Noun
turmoil (usually uncountable, plural turmoils)
- A state of great disorder or uncertainty.
- 2012 June 19, Phil McNulty, “]http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/18181971 England 1-0 Ukraine]”, in BBC Sport:
- Oleg Blokhin's side lost the talismanic Andriy Shevchenko to the substitutes' bench because of a knee injury but still showed enough to put England through real turmoil in spells.
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- Harassing labour; trouble; disturbance.
- Shakespeare
- And there I'll rest, as after much turmoil, / A blessed soul doth in Elysium.
- 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 7, in The Mirror and the Lamp:
- The turmoil went on—no rest, no peace. […] It was nearly eleven o'clock now, and he strolled out again. In the little fair created by the costers' barrows the evening only seemed beginning; and the naphtha flares made one's eyes ache, the men's voices grated harshly, and the girls' faces saddened one.
- Shakespeare
Translations
a state of great disorder or uncertainty
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Verb
turmoil (third-person singular simple present turmoils, present participle turmoiling, simple past and past participle turmoiled)
- (obsolete, intransitive) To be disquieted or confused; to be in commotion.
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Milton to this entry?)
- (obsolete, transitive) To harass with commotion; to disquiet; to worry.
- Spenser
- It is her fatal misfortune […] to be miserably tossed and turmoiled with these storms of affliction.
- Spenser
Further reading
- turmoil in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
- turmoil in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
- turmoil at OneLook Dictionary Search
- “turmoil” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2019.
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