sea change

From Act I, scene ii, of The Tempest (1610–1611) by the English playwright William Shakespeare (1564–1616), spelling modernized: “Full fathom five thy father lies, / Of his bones are coral made: / Those are pearls that were his eyes, / Nothing of him that doth fade, / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange”.[1] The passage refers to how a drowned man’s body lying on the sea bed had been transformed by the sea.

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /ˈsiːˌt͡ʃeɪnd͡ʒ/

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sea change (plural sea changes)

1. (idiomatic) A profound transformation; a metamorphosis.

   Public opinion has undergone a sea change since the 2002 elections.

   • 1842 March, “The Bermudas”, in The Ladies’ Cabinet of Fashion, Music, and Romance, volume VII, London: Geo[rge] Henderson, […], →OCLC, page 188:

     A few days wrought, as it were, a magical "sea change" in everything around us. The late dark and angry sea, lashed up into roaring and swashing surges, became calm and sunny; the rude winds died away; and gradually a light breeze sprang up directly aft.

   • 1851, “Captain Frederick Marryat”, in Robert Chambers, editor, Cyclopædia of English Literature: A Selection of the Choicest Productions of English Authors, from the Earliest to the Present Time, […], volume II, Boston, Mass.: Gould and Lincoln, […], →OCLC, page 622, column 2:

     His [Frederick Marryat's] last work, ‘Percival Keane’ (1842), betrays no falling-off, but, on the contrary, is one of the most vigorous and interesting of his ‘sea changes.’

   • 1854 January 14, Supplement to The Courant. […], volume XIX, number 1, Hartford, Conn.: Boswell & Faxon, →OCLC, page 8, column 1:

     [S]uddenly, a "sea change" came over his features, […]

   • 1869 December 4, “Submarine Warfare”, in The United States Army and Navy Journal and Gazette of the Regular and Volunteer Forces, volume VII, number 16, New York, N.Y.: Army and Navy Journal, →OCLC, page 237, column 1:

     Assuredly the fine old North Carolinan [William Alexander Graham], who has meanwhile himself gone under politically, as little anticipated while penning this sententious answer the "sea-change" as the sectional one which was to come after him. A "sea-change" has indeed transpired.

   • 1879 October, W. C. B., “John Randolph: A Sketch”, in W. P. Kent, editor, The Virginia University Magazine, volume XIX, number 1, Charlottesville, Va.: Literary Societies of the University of Virginia; Chronicle Steam Book and Job Printing Office, →OCLC, page 38:

     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.

   • 1889 August, “Books of the Month”, in The Atlantic Monthly: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics, volume LXIV, number CCCLXXXII, Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […], →OCLC, page 288, column 2:

     Is it possible that our sense of humor has already undergone a sea-change? […] [T]he book as a whole seems strangely antiquated.

   • 1894 December, Helen Marshall North, “The Charm of Variety in Life”, in Theodore L. Flood, editor, The Chautauquan […], volume XI (New Series; volume XX overall), number 3, Meadville, Pa.: The T. L. Flood Publishing House, →OCLC, page 340, column 2:

     There are other worlds than ours, and we never again return to the old place, because we have suffered not only a sea-change but a soul-change.

   • 1910 November, Jack London, “Actors’ Description of Characters”, in Theft: A Play in Four Acts, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., →OCLC, pages x–xi:

     Anthony Starkweather. […] Essentially a moral man, his rigid New England morality has suffered a sea change and developed into the morality of the master-man of affairs, equally rigid, equally uncompromising, but essentially Jesuitical in that he believes in doing wrong that right may come of it.

   • 1992, Stuart Cunningham, “A Tale of Two Institutions”, in John Tulloch, editor, Framing Culture: Criticism and Policy in Australia (Australian Cultural Studies), St. Leonards, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin, →ISBN, page 21:

     On the right, emerging from the social sciences, is a position that identifies the recent sea changes in Eastern Europe and the USSR, the longer-term global shifts toward internationalisation and the collapse of movement politics of various kinds as calling into question the continuing relevance of the neo Marxist 'motor' of cultural studies.

   • 1996, Anthony Seldon, “Introduction: The Tory Party in Power: 1783–1996”, in How Tory Governments Fall: The Tory Party in Power since 1783, London: Fourth Estate, HarperCollins, published June 2016, →ISBN:

     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.

   • 2003, Vince Lombardi, Jr., “Think Big Picture”, in The Lombardi Rules: 26 Lessons from Vince Lombardi, the World’s Greatest Coach (McGraw-Hill Professional Education), McGraw-Hill, →ISBN, page 10:

     Don't be swayed by minor setbacks: Don't confuse minor shifts with sea-changes. A bump in the road can—and should—be navigated without making major route changes.

   • 2005, Bryan Ward-Perkins, “Did Rome Ever Fall?”, in The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, 1st paperback edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire, New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, published 2006, →ISBN, page 4:

     There has been a sea change in the language used to describe post-Roman times. Words like ‘decline’ and ‘crisis’, which suggest problems at the end of the empire and which were quite usual into the 1970s, have largely disappeared from historians’ vocabularies, to be replaced by neutral terms, like ‘transition’, ‘change’, and ‘transformation’.

   • 2018, Christine K. Jahnke, “Introduction”, in The Well-spoken Woman Speaks Out: How to Use Your Voice to Drive Change, Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, […], →ISBN, page 10:

     A sea change is under way. It used to be that when a man spoke, people listened; and when a woman spoke, her credentials were questioned, appearance found lacking, and message dismissed. Not. Any. More.

   • 2022 January 26, John Crosse, “When the tide turned to a safer railway...”, in RAIL, number 949, page 53:

     The catalyst was the introduction of the Health & Safety at Work Act in 1974. While it applied to all workplaces, it gradually brought about a sea change in the attitude towards death and injury. Accidents were no longer accepted as 'inevitable'.

• paradigm shift
• quantum leap
• step change
• seed change

• sea change (idiom) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• sea change on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “sea-change, n.” under “sea, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, March 2021.
• “sea change, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• Michael Quinion (March 25, 2000) “Sea change”, in World Wide Words.