charybdis

• Depending on the social background of your ward (affluent, white, middle-class wasp or impoverished, socially-excluded, ethnic minority) you can guide her between the scylla and charybdis of a life of hellish servitude in a loveless marriage or perhaps the path of a full-blown prostitute. —  Blather.net newsfeed
• Politically veering between the scylla of Moscow and the charybdis of Washington, Poland must now attempt to steer her society away from the traps of materialism. —  Andrew Cusack
• A French gentleman not only washes his filthy hands at table, but, after gulping a mouthful, and using it as a gargle, squirts it into the basin standing before him, and the company, who may see the charybdis or maelstrom he has made in it, and the floating filth he has discharged, and which is now whirling in its vortex. —  The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 14, No. 401, November 28, 1829
• The exertions of the men at the oars were of no avail, and irresistibly our small ark was attracted by this charybdis. —  The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 10 Prince Otto Von Bismarck, Count Helmuth Von Moltke, Ferdinand Lassalle
• As to dive to the howling charybdis below? —  The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 03 Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. in Twenty Volumes

Word Family