seachange
/ˈsiːˌt͡ʃeɪnd͡ʒ/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.58 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Alternative form of sea change (“a profound transformation; a metamorphosis”).
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "The seachange shift was initiated by retirees from the late 1960s although it did acquire a spiritual status when embraced by the boomers from 2001 onwards. […] The drivers of treechange and seachange are the same: people wanting a simpler life in a pleasant town with all the amenities not too far from their interests in the city."
- "For example, the ‘seachange’ and ‘treechange’ movements have seen transitions in rural and regional communities, with the influx of wealthy city-dwellers increasing the price of housing and demanding the provision of particular services and facilities[…]."
- "This is supported by consultant reports she found online, whose interpretations of ABS data point to the emergence of seachange and treechange towns that have increasing demand for services. (Seachange and treechange are terms used to describe people moving out of cities to coastal or rural areas.)"
- "Surrey […] was negotiating with his wife to move the family (two teenaged girls, reluctant to leave their high school friends) to Tathra and a new house, perhaps with a view of the sea. The trick was going to be maintaining the loyalty of his longstanding if slow-paying rural clients, when he planned to spend most of his time on the coast, away from the extremes of the Goulburn climate ('Either too cold, too hot, too dry, too windy, or too wet,' he was wont to say). There had proved to be lots of minor crime on the coast, which augured well for the seachange."
- "It is interesting to watch how the most unpromising subject seems to warm and assimilate with his [John Randolph of Roanoke's] genius. Everything undergoes a seachange."
- "New economic, social and international pressures were threatening a seachange in the language of politics, with more activism sought from government than in the laissez-faire nineteenth century."
Etymology
From sea + change; sense 1 (“movement of people from cities to rural coastal areas; act of relocating from an urban to a rural coastal community”) was possibly coined by the Australian author and demographer Bernard Salt in his book The Big Shift (2001), based on the title of the Australian television series SeaChange (1998–2000 and 2019) about a lawyer who moved with her daughters from the city to a coastal town.
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈsiːˌt͡ʃeɪnd͡ʒ/
- British English: /ˈsiːˌt͡ʃeɪnd͡ʒ/