A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1467 entries
maelstrom
A maelstrom is a powerful whirlpool produced where a strong tidal current is forced through a narrow channel over an uneven bottom. The original is the Moskstraumen, off the Lofoten Islands in northern Norway, where the tide moves between the open sea and a broad sheltered sound through a gap in the island chain and runs at speeds over twenty knots.
Etymology
The word came into English from Dutch, from a name on Dutch charts of the sixteenth century, and it means grinding stream or crushing current. English took the proper name of one specific place and made it a common noun for the phenomenon, then made it a metaphor for any violent confusion.