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  1. sea change love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A change caused by the sea: "Of his bones are coral made:/Those are pearls that were his eyes:/Nothing of him that doth fade,/But doth suffer a sea change” ( Shakespeare).
  2. n. A marked transformation: "The script suffered considerable sea changes, particularly in structure” ( Harold Pinter).

Wiktionary

  1. n. idiomatic A profound transformation.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a profound transformation

Etymologies

  1. From Shakespeare's The Tempest, 1, ii. (Wiktionary)

Examples

  • “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.”

    THEFT

  • “Although Dr. Remen was also the only woman so honored, I couldn’t help noticing that the majority of people in the room championing this sea change in medical consciousness were themselves women.”

    Simon & Schuster: Manifesting Michelangelo

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hypernyms (3)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. transmutation
  1. transformation
  1. shift

reverse dictionary (11)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. sea change
  2. Crimea
  1. dereliction
  2. sea-change
  1. Sicily
  2. Proteus
  1. eustasy
  2. protean
  1. rocking bob
  2. work
  1. whiten

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Word visualization

Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘sea change’.

Comments

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  • gangerh Hah! So 'tis, John! Oct 20, 2009

  • john sweet tooth fairy! Oct 20, 2009

  • gangerh But, but... that would surely be a deep sea change. Oct 19, 2009

  • ecbrenner "A profound transformation." --WordNet Oct 19, 2009

  • bilby Lovely citation, thanks vpl. Dec 3, 2007

  • victoriapl Full fathom five thy father lies;
    Of his bones are coral made;
    Those are pearls that were his eyes;
    Nothing of him that does fade,
    But doth suffer a sea-change
    Into something rich and strange.
    from The Tempest by William Shakespeare Dec 3, 2007

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‘sea change’ has been looked up 1736 times, loved by 4 people, added to 13 lists, commented on 6 times, and is not a valid Scrabble word.