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6 answers

The phrase is a quotation from Shakespeare. It comes from Ariel’s wonderfully evocative song in The Tempest:

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.

The Oxford English Dictionary finds the first allusive use in one of Ezra Pound’s poems from 1917. But examples can be found a little earlier than that, as in The Great White Wall by Julian Hawthorne, dated 1877: “Three centuries ago, according to my porter, a sea-change happened here which really deserves to be called strange”.
(quoted from the World Wide Words)

2006-07-02 09:19:00 · answer #1 · answered by Andrew W 3 · 10 0

The expression is "sea change" and I've heard it used in 3 different ways: 1) a large change, 2) a fundamental change, 3) an abrupt change. The expression is usually used in reference to the policy or opinion of a large group of people, e.g. scientific opinion, public policy, governmental programmes. In some sense, the above 3 meanings are related, i.e. an abrupt change is apt to be a large one and the outward or observeable effects probably signal a similarly sized change in underpinning or fundamental thought on the matter.

2006-07-02 10:28:01 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

sea change = large difference, eg Carter to Reagan!!

2006-07-02 13:06:04 · answer #3 · answered by Conservative 5 · 0 0

dhange c to d an you will have dodk

2006-07-02 10:08:48 · answer #4 · answered by itsa o 6 · 0 0

nope

2006-07-02 09:17:55 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

no idea ...

2006-07-02 09:21:25 · answer #6 · answered by Manis 4 · 0 0

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