CHAOS

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does Chaos mean? 

• CHAOS (noun)
  The noun CHAOS has 4 senses:

1. a state of extreme confusion and disorder

2. the formless and disordered state of matter before the creation of the cosmos

3. (Greek mythology) the most ancient of gods; the personification of the infinity of space preceding creation of the universe

4. (physics) a dynamical system that is extremely sensitive to its initial conditions

  Familiarity information: CHAOS used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CHAOS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A state of extreme confusion and disorder

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

bedlam; chaos; pandemonium; topsy-turvydom; topsy-turvyness

Hypernyms ("chaos" is a kind of...):

confusion (disorder resulting from a failure to behave predictably)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "chaos"):

balagan (a word for chaos or fiasco borrowed from modern Hebrew (where it is a loan word from Russian))

Derivation:

chaotic (completely unordered and unpredictable and confusing)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The formless and disordered state of matter before the creation of the cosmos

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural phenomena

Hypernyms ("chaos" is a kind of...):

physical phenomenon (a natural phenomenon involving the physical properties of matter and energy)

Sense 3

Meaning:

(Greek mythology) the most ancient of gods; the personification of the infinity of space preceding creation of the universe

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Instance hypernyms:

Greek deity (a deity worshipped by the ancient Greeks)

Domain category:

Greek mythology (the mythology of the ancient Greeks)

Sense 4

Meaning:

(physics) a dynamical system that is extremely sensitive to its initial conditions

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Hypernyms ("chaos" is a kind of...):

dynamical system ((physics) a phase space together with a transformation of that space)

Domain category:

natural philosophy; physics (the science of matter and energy and their interactions)

Derivation:

chaotic (of or relating to a sensitive dependence on initial conditions)

 Context examples 

Uranus, which rules computer software, could create chaos if not checked.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

Faster and faster it revolved, until its vortex sucked him in and he was flung whirling through black chaos.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

However, geologists and astronomers have struggled to extend the astronomical time scale farther back than 50 million years because of solar system chaos, which has made the time scale unpredictable beyond a certain point.

(Deep-sea sediments lead to new understanding of solar system, National Science Foundation)

It was a wild chaos where axe and sword rose and fell, while Englishman, Norman, and Italian staggered and reeled on a deck which was cumbered with bodies and slippery with blood.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

While the individual clocks in different organs peak at different times, this didn’t result in complete chaos.

(Plants can tell time even without a brain, University of Cambridge)

At such moments I felt strangely alone with God, alone with him and watching the chaos of his wrath.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

It worked and worked faster: I felt the pulses throb in my head and temples; but for nearly an hour it worked in chaos; and no result came of its efforts.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

All this is from my hurried notes taken at the time, which give little notion of the absolute chaos to which the assembly had by this time been reduced.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Had the cub thought in man-fashion, he might have epitomised life as a voracious appetite and the world as a place wherein ranged a multitude of appetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and being hunted, eating and being eaten, all in blindness and confusion, with violence and disorder, a chaos of gluttony and slaughter, ruled over by chance, merciless, planless, endless.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Their determined rush carried the prize-fighters before them, the inner ropes snapped like threads, and in an instant the ring was a swirling,’ seething mass of figures, whips and sticks falling and clattering, whilst, face to face, in the middle of it all, so wedged that they could neither advance nor retreat, the smith and the west-countryman continued their long-drawn battle as oblivious of the chaos raging round them as two bulldogs would have been who had got each other by the throat.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)