death spiral
- noun
- If no reform is enacted, the entire insurance industry goes into the death spiral of ever higher premiums.
In a way, Matt is the original Jackal, and in a way he's responsible for this death spiral I've been in ever since.
- In a way, Matt is the original Jackal, and in a way he's responsible for this death spiral I've been in ever since.
- Whenever I start a new maker project, I get stuck in a death spiral of perfectionism that prevents me from even starting.
- So this apartment building went through, I have to went through a cycle, I call it the death spiral like a property.
- So you have this like stair stepping death spiral disaster of FTT gets less valuable when FTX gets less valuable.
Examples
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Iraq continues in a seemingly endless death spiral into chaos.
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Management did nothing new to adapt, and the death spiral began.
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There are three ways out of this death spiral crisis.
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If I can get out of this death spiral, maybe I can.
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What is happening is more people are leaving, and the result is the death spiral.
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We must grow our way out of this death spiral by returning to the policies of economic growth.
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The result is a death spiral for the current business model for electric utilities.
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Tax increases will only worsen our misery and put us in the kind of death spiral.
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Bear Stearns was in a death spiral and the Fed brokered its sale.
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The economy has collapsed, and the stock market is in a death spiral.
Synonyms
A situation where one problem causes another and makes things worse
A fast chain of problems where each causes the next
Antonyms
How Rapidly
Surface Forms
Morphology
The parts 'death' (end/destruction) and 'spiral' (an accelerating process) together suggest a quickly accelerating decline toward an end, so a learner who knows both words can grasp the general idea. However, the specific sense of an irreversible, inevitable collapse is a metaphorical extension and somewhat idiomatic, so the full implications may not be fully predictable without prior exposure.
Etymology
Death spiral may come from the image of a plane or object moving down in smaller and smaller circles in a spiral toward death. So, the phrase describes a situation that keeps getting worse and cannot be stopped, ending in 'failure' or 'collapse'.