death spiral
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.84 in modern English
Meaning
noun
The downward, corkscrew-motion of a disabled aircraft which is unrecoverably headed for a crash.
noun
A manoeuvre in which a male skater spins in place while holding one hand of his female skating partner as she circles around him with one skate on the ice and one leg extended outward parallel to the ice surface, all the while slowly lowering herself until her back almost touches the ice surface.
noun
The situation or course of action of one who is on a path toward some sort of inevitable catastrophic failure; a negative feedback loop.
noun
Synonym of ant mill (“a phenomenon where a group of army ants, separated from the main foraging party, lose the pheromone track and begin to follow one another, forming a continuously rotating circle and eventually dying of exhaustion.”).
Example Sentences
- "The only way to account for it is a structural breakup in flight, a stall, a spin, a death spiral as we call it."
- "“We call this getting yourself in a square corner, when you run out of ideas and experience at the same time,” said Mr. Barr, a fighter pilot in the Vietnam War. “[…] Even for a good pilot, that could produce a death spiral.”"
- "There are four types of death spirals, named for the edge on which the lady is skating—forward outside, forward inside, back outside, or back inside."
- "But what followed for Lozano, his grieving family claims, was a death spiral into infantilism and madness."
- "The markets are in meltdown, intensifying the downward pirouette of what the international financier George Soros has called "Greece's death spiral"."
- "If the efficiency of the pipeline drops below a certain critical threshold, the systems upstream from the pipeline begin increasing their inputs into the pipeline, which causes the pipeline to lose more efficiency, and the death-spiral begins."