TURBULENT

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(of a liquid) agitated vigorously; in a state of turbulence

Example:

turbulent rapids

Synonyms:

churning; roiled; roiling; roily; turbulent

Classified under:

Adjectives

Similar:

agitated (physically disturbed or set in motion)

Derivation:

turbulence; turbulency (unstable flow of a liquid or gas)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Characterized by unrest or disorder or insubordination

Example:

a turbulent and unruly childhood

Synonyms:

disruptive; riotous; troubled; tumultuous; turbulent

Classified under:

Adjectives

Similar:

unquiet (characterized by unrest or disorder)

Derivation:

turbulence (a state of violent disturbance and disorder (as in politics or social conditions generally))

Credits

Context examples:

This has provided astronomers with a clear glimpse of how stars go from a sometimes-turbulent adolescence into calmer adulthood.

(Spitzer Studies a Stellar Playground With a Long History, NASA)

The images show a pattern of turbulent “boiling” plasma that covers the entire sun.

(Newest solar telescope produces first images, National Science Foundation)

If you are married, you are not likely to feel the turbulent atmosphere because a different part of the chart, the seventh house of marriage, covers your relationship.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

Such galactic outflows are driven by the huge energy output from the active and turbulent centres of galaxies.

(Stars Born in Winds from Supermassive Black Holes, ESO)

The study found no evidence of cold turbulent clouds or small dense clumps of cool halo gas.

(Enigmatic radio burst illuminates a galaxy’s tranquil halo, ESO)

Never before had I understood that deep-seated fear and wholesome respect which many centuries of bludgeoning at the hands of the law had beaten into the fierce and turbulent natives of these islands.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed's pardon; but I knew, partly from experience and partly from instinct, that was the way to make her repulse me with double scorn, thereby re-exciting every turbulent impulse of my nature.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I was well aware that you could not do this without thinking of the mission which he undertook on behalf of the North at the time of the Civil War, for I remember your expressing your passionate indignation at the way in which he was received by the more turbulent of our people.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The new analysis — based on advances in measurement capabilities and a global survey of lava flows, ocean sediments and Antarctic ice cores — provides a detailed look at a turbulent time for Earth's magnetic field.

(Earth's last magnetic field reversal took far longer than once thought, National Science Foundation)

The astronomers found turbulent, low-density gas much further from the star than predicted, and concluded that the movement could not result from convection, that is, from large-scale movement of matter which transfers energy from the core to the outer atmosphere of many stars.