meltdown
Meanings
noun
- An act or process of melting.
- Severe uncontrolled overheating and melting of the fuel in the core of a nuclear reactor, with the potential for radiation to escape; (countable) an instance of this.
- A mass of melted material.
- Chiefly preceded by a descriptive word: uncontrolled disorder which often has disastrous consequences; (countable) a situation involving this; a crisis.
- Synonym of crash (“a sudden large decline in the value of money, stocks or other assets, etc., especially one that causes additional economic difficulties”).
- (Sudden) loss of control over one's behaviour, emotions, etc.; (countable) an instance of this.
- An emotional outburst; a fit, a tantrum.
- A response to sensory overload or stress, in which an autistic person is overwhelmed by intense, seemingly disproportionate emotions, behaving erratically and becoming unable to mask (“act more neurotypically”).
- Synonym of nervous breakdown (“an attack of a psychological disorder such as anxiety or depression which is so severe that it prevents a person from continuing to function normally”); also (loosely), a situation where one is unable to function mentally due to panic, stress, etc.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From melt (verb) + down (adverb), a deverbal from melt down (verb).
Synonyms
Related words
Derived words
Translations
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.