sea change

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a profound, fundamental, and comprehensive transformation of something, a change so deep and thoroughgoing that what emerges is qualitatively different from what existed before rather than merely an incremental modification; the phrase was coined by Shakespeare in The Tempest where Ariel describes the transformation of a drowned man's body by the sea into something rich and strange, capturing the image of the ocean as a force that does not merely alter but entirely transmutes the things it works upon; it is used to describe major shifts in political opinion, cultural values, organisational direction, or scientific paradigm that represent genuine discontinuities rather than gradual evolution