turmoil

Unknown origin. Perhaps from Old French tremouille (“the hopper of a mill”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈtɜːmɔɪl/

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turmoil (usually uncountable, plural turmoils)

1. 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.

2. 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.

• chaos, disorder

turmoil (third-person singular simple present turmoils, present participle turmoiling, simple past and past participle turmoiled)

1. (obsolete, intransitive) To be disquieted or confused; to be in commotion.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Milton to this entry?)

2. (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.

• 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.