Meltdown: From Metallurgy to Metaphor

[beamjockey]

Someone mentioned an "emotional meltdown" to me this week. I realized that the word "meltdown" has not always been with us-- it was a term used by specialists until a particular historical moment, after which it was on everyone's lips. I used Google Ngram Viewer to investigate this

Comments

[charlie_meadows]

" 'The spectrum' is another term that has a new meaning that it didn't have a few years ago."

The use of "spectrum" to which you link is likely lifted from the earlier existing medical/clinical appearance in such terms as "broad-spectrum antibiotic".* It *is* a bit of a wandering for the meaning to drift from "rainbow" to "range"...

* going back to at least the '50s (I can see how the Ngram viewer can be addicting...)

[anonymous]

I have the China Syndrome movie and the word meltdown is never used the words "melts right down" are the closest thing. For those that don't know the movie involves a TV news reporter and her cameraman touring a controversial nuclear power plant to do a fluff piece but during the tour they witness and film what looks like a problem the nuclear engineers in the control room are frantically running around and acting bewildered. The cameraman later takes the film to a couple of anti-nuclear experts who interprets the footage saying it looks like the operators almost exposed the core. The reporter asked if that would be bad and the one of the experts explains the China syndrome