How to use maelstrom in a sentence

11 example sentences · noun

Maelstrom means a large and violent whirlpool. Example: “To his right fell a gleaming sheet of water, and below it was a maelstrom, that made one giddy by its terrific gyrations.”

Examples of maelstrom by meaning

nounA large and violent whirlpool.

To his right fell a gleaming sheet of water, and below it was a maelstrom, that made one giddy by its terrific gyrations.1905, James Edward Preston Muddock, “A Petrified Forest”, in The Sunless City […], London: F. V. White & Co., →OCLC
The falukah plunged over a waterfall and was almost submerged, was caught again in a maelstrom and went twirling on in the blackness.1914 November 14, Arthur Train, [Robert Williams Wood], “The Man Who Rocked the Earth”, in The Saturday Evening Post, volume 187, number...
A hulking shape burst through the doorway and hurtled down the corridor, leaving a maelstrom of air currents in his wake.2001 April 26, Eoin Colfer, “Troll”, in Artemis Fowl, New York, N.Y.; Toronto, Ont.: Scholastic, published September 2001, →ISBN, page 212

nounA chaotic or turbulent situation.

He escaped at last, dizzy from the maelstrom of conflicting emotions that had caught and whirled him.1922, Harry Leon Wilson, “‘Five Reels—500 Laughs’”, in Merton of the Movies, Garden City, N.Y.; Toronto, Ont.: Doubleday, Page & Company...
A Twitter post intended to celebrate a funny photo of Abby, a “chonk” sea otter at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, instead stirred an online maelstrom of criticism, KNTV reports.2018 December 20, Don Sweeney, “Aquarium apologizes for ‘offensive’ Twitter post praising Abby the ‘thicc’ otter”, in The Sacramento Bee...
An officer makes his way through the maelstrom to report a serious fire in one of the turrets.2019 September 18, Drachinifel, 21:07 from the start, in Battle of Tsushima - When the 2nd Pacific Squadron thought it couldn't get any...

More sentences with maelstrom

Several gingerly taps on her console fired clusters of modified probes into the maelstrom of the gas giant’s atmosphere.2012, David [Alan] Mack, chapter 28, in Persistence of Memory (Star Trek: The Next Generation; Cold Equations; book 1), New York, N.Y.…. From the entry gingerly
West Indian youngsters, marooned in this cultural maelstrom and kicking their heels in inner-city estates, took refuge in their musical roots: ska, bluebeat and rocksteady.2019 February 16, Kim Willsher, “From Soho to Paris, how migrant music brought two capitals to life”, in The Guardian, →ISSN. From the entry bluebeat
He was thrust into a political maelstrom for which he was ill-prepared, and yet he was, most notably, the Chicago machine's political savior.2013, Paul M. Green, Melvin G. Holli, The Mayors: The Chicago Political Tradition, fourth edition, SIU Press, →ISBN, page 126. From the entry machine
Scylla and Charybdis pale by comparison with the great maelstroms where the sea is trapped between Vancouver Island and the Canadian mainland.2003 December, Jonathan Raban, “Julia and the Whirlpools”, in Cruising World, volume 29, number 12, page 40. From the entry race
Humans had to be schooled in how to describe the maelstrom as if they weren’t lost in the middle of it, in their own unbailable open boat.1995, Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2, Vintage (2019), page 246. From the entry unbailable

Meaning of maelstrom

noun A large and violent whirlpool.
noun A chaotic or turbulent situation.

Full definition of maelstrom

Questions about maelstrom in a sentence

How do you use maelstrom in a sentence?: Maelstrom is used as a noun. For example: “To his right fell a gleaming sheet of water, and below it was a maelstrom, that made one giddy by its terrific gyrations.”
What is a short sentence with maelstrom?: “He escaped at last, dizzy from the maelstrom of conflicting emotions that had caught and whirled him.”
What does maelstrom mean?: Maelstrom means a large and violent whirlpool.

Adapted from Wiktionary: maelstrom (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use maelstrom in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/maelstrom. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.