Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The rapid descent of an aircraft in a steep, spiral spin.
- noun Informal A loss of emotional control sometimes resulting in emotional collapse.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The
rapid ,uncontrollable descent of anaircraft in asteep spiral . - noun A severe
mental oremotional collapse ; emotionalbreakdown . - noun Any sharp, sustained, often uncontrollable
descent ordecline .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun loss of emotional control often resulting in emotional collapse
- noun rapid descent of an aircraft in a steep spiral
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The climate is in tailspin What are you waiting for?
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My theory on the tailspin is because the Indians are built around so many talented young players who found winning easy last year.
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SNOW: He really has, and that word tailspin just as indicative of how fierce, though, the competition is here.
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This notion that the Albemarle economy is in a tailspin is absolute bunk.
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Microsoft is sinking fast in this market already, and whether Windows Phone 7 can pull them out of their tailspin is the billion-dollar question.
The Register 2010
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Mr. LEVIN: That created a kind of tailspin for him because he realized that this guy could do something that he couldn't do.
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She passed away suddenly the summer before our senior year, and it threw Jamie in the kind of tailspin I can only imagine.
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She passed away suddenly the summer before our senior year, and it threw Jamie in the kind of tailspin I can only imagine.
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Meredith goes into a mini-freakout about how terrible a mother she'd be, but it's like an eighth of the kind of tailspin she used to fall into, and pretty much holds it together.
From Inside the Box Lisa Todorovich 2010
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Obama's speech in New York on Monday will push Congress to take action on regulatory reform to prevent the kind of tailspin that the economy went through last year.
Market News 2009
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