chaos
- 1A state of complete disorder or confusion; a jumbled mixture with no clear arrangement.
Like a beehive after someone kicks it: frantic, disordered motion in every direction.
After the storm knocked out the power, the busy train station quickly descended into chaos.
After the referee's final call, chaos broke out across the stands.
UsageNo article: descend into chaos, in chaos, total chaos. The adjective is chaotic.
Similardisorder, confusion, mayhem, pandemonium, turmoil
Note
Irwin Edman's Adam, the Baby, and the Man from Mars writes that "out of these chaoses order may be made." That line borrows the creation picture of the primordial chaos for ordinary muddles.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- The quoted words are attributed to Irwin Edman's Adam, the Baby, and the Man from Mars. en.wiktionary.org
- 2Apparently random behavior of a deterministic nonlinear system, in which tiny differences in starting conditions grow into very large differences over time.
Start two double pendulums a hair's width apart and within seconds their swings bear no resemblance, a textbook display of chaos.
Long-range weather prediction is limited by chaos: small errors in today's measurements grow steadily as the model runs forward.
Note
A mathematician's chaos is deterministic. Nothing random happens, and every later state is fixed by the starting one. The system is unpredictable in practice because no starting state can be measured, or computed, exactly, and the tiny error grows. Chaotic motion can look regular for long stretches, so it should not be read as everyday disorder. A system exhibits chaos, or shows the onset of chaos.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- Mathematical chaos is deterministic, with future states determined by the initial state and no random component required. en.wikipedia.org
- Chaos limits long-term prediction through amplification of small errors; numerical truncation and rounding errors also matter, independently of initial measurement error. arxiv.org
- Small errors in initial conditions can grow enough to undermine prediction. ecmwf.int
- Chaotic motion can appear regular for long stretches. ri.conicet.gov.ar
- 3The formless, unordered state of primordial matter, as described in classical accounts of how the universe began.
Like the jumble of raw ingredients before a cook turns them into a finished dish.
Greek poets described how order first emerged from primordial chaos.
In many creation myths, a maker draws land and sea out of chaos.
Similarvoid
Note
Greek gave English a gap before a substance: kháos meant a vast chasm or void, a use English kept in the "abyss" meaning. In Hesiod's Theogony, Chaos comes into being first, and Night and Erebus are born from it. Only from the 16th century did English use it for primordial matter, the shapeless jumble Ovid's Metamorphoses describes. It usually takes no plural and often no article, as in order rose out of chaos.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 6 facts
- Greek kháos meant a vast chasm or void. en.wiktionary.org
- English retained the Greek abyss sense before developing the primordial-matter sense. en.wiktionary.org
- In Hesiod's Theogony, Chaos comes into being first. en.wikisource.org
- Hesiod's Theogony makes Night and Erebus offspring of Chaos. en.wikisource.org
- The English primordial-matter sense dates from the 16th century. en.wiktionary.org
- Ovid's Metamorphoses describes Chaos as a shapeless, disordered mass. en.wikisource.org
- 4In some fantasy settings, one of two fundamental cosmic forces, standing in opposition to law.
In this fantasy world, every wizard draws power from either law or chaos, the two great forces that shape the universe.
The novel's gods are split between chaos and law, each side pulling the world its own way.
Oppositelaw
Note
Here chaos is a principle with followers and allegiances rather than a mess. A character can be drawn to it, and a god can serve it.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- Chaos can have divine and mortal adherents in such settings. en.wikipedia.org
Less common meanings
- 5A vast chasm, gulf, or yawning abyss.
Note
Here English kept the Greek word's own meaning, a gaping void. This was how the word was used in Early Modern English, before it came to mean the formless stuff of creation. The sense is obsolete, so a chaos yawning beneath a mountain now reads as deliberate archaism. For a plain present-day description, chasm or abyss is the word to use.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 2 facts
- The Greek word meant a void, chasm or abyss, and English retained this meaning. en.wikipedia.org
- Early Modern English used the original Greek sense; the primordial-matter meaning developed subsequently. en.wiktionary.org
- 6A surrounding medium or environment within which something exists or lives.
Note
This old philosophical usage gives every kind of creature its own chaos, meaning the element it lives in. Robert Burton, writing as Democritus Junior in 1621, reports Paracelsus's view that fairies have the earth as their chaos, just as nymphs have the woods and waters. The sense is obsolete and rare. Modern English would say element, medium or environment.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- In this historical usage, a creature's chaos is the element in which it lives. gutenberg.org
- Robert Burton wrote under the pseudonym Democritus Junior. en.wikipedia.org
- The Anatomy of Melancholy was first published in 1621. specialcollections.ul.ie
- Burton attributes to Paracelsus the view that earth is the chaos of its inhabitants, comparing fairies there with nymphs in woods and waters. gutenberg.org
Practice
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Origin
This is a learned borrowing from Ancient Greek χάος (kháos), meaning "vast chasm, void," and is a doublet of "gas." It was first used in the original Greek sense, then meant "primordial matter" from the 16th century, took on the figurative sense of "confusion, disorder" by the late 16th century, and gained its technical scientific meaning in the 1970s.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 7 facts
- Chaos is a learned borrowing from Ancient Greek χάος (kháos). en.wiktionary.org
- The Greek word means a vast chasm or void. en.wikipedia.org
- Chaos and gas are doublets. en.wiktionary.org
- The original Greek sense preceded the later English senses. en.wiktionary.org
- The sense ‘primordial matter’ dates from the 16th century. en.wiktionary.org
- The figurative sense ‘confusion, disorder’ existed by the late 16th century, as demonstrated by Stephen Gosson’s The Schoole of Abuse (1579). scholarsbank.uoregon.edu
- The modern technical scientific meaning dates from the 1970s; Yorke’s university biography identifies the mathematical coinage with a 1975 paper. terpconnect.umd.edu