[Q] From Dave Donnelly in Hawaii: The phrase sea change appears frequently in both books and newspapers, and the only definition I’ve been able to find for it is that it is a transformation. How did the phrase come about and why?
[A] 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.
Shakespeare obviously meant that the transformation of the body of Ferdinand’s father was made by the sea, but we have come to refer to a sea change as being a profound transformation caused by any agency. So pundits and commentators who think it has something to do with the ebb and flow of the tide, and use it for a minor or recurrent shift in policy or opinion, are doing a grave injustice to one of the most evocative phrases in the language.
copied from "World Wide Words"
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