Meltdown

How to spell meltdown

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce meltdown

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does meltdown mean?

1. nounA sudden and disastrous collapse of a system, situation, or organisation.
2. nounA sudden episode of intense, uncontrolled emotion or loss of composure.
3. nounAn accident in which the core of a nuclear reactor overheats and melts.

Meltdown in a sentence

• The bank's failure triggered a financial meltdown across the region.

• The toddler had a complete meltdown in the supermarket aisle.

• Engineers worked to prevent a reactor meltdown after the cooling system failed.

• A software glitch caused a complete meltdown of the booking system.

• After weeks of overtime, she came close to an emotional meltdown at her desk.

• The documentary examined the causes of the 1986 meltdown at the power plant.

Where does meltdown come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent modern compound built from two very old native English words. The first element, melt, descends from the Old English verb meltan, meaning to become liquid through heat, which itself goes back to a Germanic root shared with words about softening and dissolving. The second element, down, comes from Old English dune, originally a shortening of ofdune meaning off the hill or downward. The compound was coined in the twentieth century, first in the technical sense of a nuclear reactor core overheating until its fuel literally melts, a meaning that became widely known from the 1960s onward. From there the word spread figuratively, first to describe sudden financial or systemic collapse and then, by the late twentieth century, to mean an emotional breakdown or loss of self-control. Because both parts are familiar everyday words, the spelling is straightforward and the only thing to remember is that it is written as one solid word.

How the word is built

• melt (from Old English meltan, to become liquid)
• down (adverb of direction)