Adjective : cataclysmic changes. From Dictionary.com.
The belief belongs to what may be called the cataclysmal theory of progress, which improves the world by sudden starts, and clings so fondly to liquor-laws, and has profound faith in specific remedies for moral and political diseases. From Wordnik.com. [Reflections and Comments 1865-1895] Reference
As I was playing my dad yesterday, I thought back upon those days of constantly inclement tempers, and was astonished at my cataclysmal past. From Wordnik.com. [love-forty] Reference
Years ago he began to lay the groundwork for the gigantic, cataclysmal acts of dark necromancy that should rock the earth to its core and enslave its inhabitants. From Wordnik.com. [Conan the Avenger]
This cataclysmal desire drew me by day and by night. From Wordnik.com. [The Home and the World] Reference
He says it was bloodcurdling, horrible, cataclysmal. From Wordnik.com. [Indian Summer] Reference
This complete collapse of the economy will set into motion a series of cataclysmal events. From Wordnik.com. Reference
Miss Quincey was quite shaken by this cataclysmal outbreak, this overturning and shattering of the old beacons and landmarks. From Wordnik.com. [Superseded] Reference
But geologists are becoming more and more loath to call in the cataclysmal to explain any feature of the topography of the land. From Wordnik.com. [Time and Change] Reference
So the worship which many render to the unexplained, the fantastic, the cataclysmal -- this is the awe that is born of ignorance. From Wordnik.com. [The Story of the Mind] Reference
It must be about ten years after the cataclysmal event, as that's about how old I'd estimate the young boy who was born after the tragedy. From Wordnik.com. [ChristianCinema.com - Faith Affirming and Family Approved Entertainment] Reference
Some cataclysmal upheaval would seem to account for such disrupture rather than the infinitely slow processes suggested by geological history. From Wordnik.com. [The Roof of France] Reference
This eastern verge of the Fontainebleau forest is of especial beauty; the frowning headlands seem set there as sentinels jealously guarding its integrity, on the watch against human encroachments, defying time and change and cataclysmal upheaval. From Wordnik.com. [East of Paris Sketches in the Gâtinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne] Reference
We have reached our limit, and the best thing to be hoped for now is some vast cataclysmal event, which, by destroying us out-of-hand, may save us the slow misery of extinction by disease, despair, and the enmity of every man against every other. From Wordnik.com. [The Arena Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891] Reference
The almost cataclysmal development of new machinery, the discovery of new materials, and the appearance of new social possibilities through the organised pursuit of material science, has given enormous and unprecedented facilities to the spirit of innovation. From Wordnik.com. [A Modern Utopia] Reference
Instead of there being before him the pale face of Eustacia, and a masculine shape unknown, there was only the imperturbable countenance of the heath, which, having defied the cataclysmal onsets of centuries, reduced to insignificance by its seamed and antique features the wildest turmoil of a single man. From Wordnik.com. [The Return of the Native] Reference
I was myself part of the antiquity with which I have been trying to be honest; and, though my date was no earlier than the seventh decade of the nineteenth century, still so many and such cataclysmal changes had passed over Rome since my time that I was, as far as concerned my own consciousness, practically of the period of the Pantheon, say. From Wordnik.com. [Roman Holidays, and Others] Reference
As the road curved about the outer verge of the mountain, the valley far beneath came into view, with intersecting valleys and transverse ranges, dense with the growths of primeval wildernesses, and rugged with the tilted strata of great upheavals, and with chasms cut in the solid rock by centuries of erosion, traces of some remote cataclysmal period, registering thus its throes and turmoils. From Wordnik.com. [The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge 1895] Reference
A third attempt, the substitution of a differently constituted body, could only come if this institution collapsed as the result of a new catastrophe: if certain dubious portents fulfil their menace, it might emerge into being and might even this time be more successful because of an increased and a more general determination not to allow such a calamity to occur again; but it would be after a third cataclysmal struggle which might shake to its foundations the international structure now holding together after two upheavals with so much difficulty and unease. From Wordnik.com. [Archive 2007-10-01] Reference
(cataclysmal obsequies!) beneath a landslide of Hellenistic. From Wordnik.com. [The Crest-Wave of Evolution A Course of Lectures in History, Given to the Graduates' Class in the Raja-Yoga College, Point Loma, in the College-Year 1918-19] Reference
A spiritualist Longfellow's brother-in-law, Appleton, was; and when he was at the table too, it took all the poet's delicate skill to keep him and the Autocrat from involving themselves in a cataclysmal controversy upon the matter of manifestations. From Wordnik.com. [Literary Friends and Acquaintance; a Personal Retrospect of American Authorship] Reference
In the matter immediately under review, however, the world-wide pandemic of "Spanish Influenza," there can remain no shadow of doubt in the mind of any unbiased observer who follows the question fairly along the lines of electro-chemical biology, but that the general emotional disturbances incident upon the war conditions of the world, combined with the chaotic dietetic position with its anxieties and privations under strenuous and unwonted physical demands, do undoubtedly afford a sound and reasonable explanation of the cataclysmal outbreak which has recently fallen upon the nations. From Wordnik.com. [Valere Aude Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration] Reference
Comes that snarl through the clash cataclysmal. From Wordnik.com. [Jones and Calypso] Reference
But I doubt it, especially if the thing outside is some great event, something cataclysmal, like this tremendous sorrow of Dryfoos's. ". From Wordnik.com. [A Hazard of New Fortunes — Complete] Reference
Extinction, cataclysmal or regulated?. From Wordnik.com. [The World's Greatest Books — Volume 15 — Science] Reference
The cataclysmal force to which we owe. From Wordnik.com. [The California Birthday Book] Reference
Suppose the Americans, owing to some cataclysmal events, had forgotten their English origin, and after two or three thousand years found themselves in possession of a language and of ideas which they could trace back historically to a certain date, but which, at that date, seemed, as it were, fallen from the sky, without any explanation of their origin and previous growth, what would they say if suddenly the existence of an English language and literature were revealed to them, such as they existed in the eighteenth century -- explaining all that seemed before almost miraculous, and solving almost every question that could be asked?. From Wordnik.com. [India: What can it teach us? A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge] Reference
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