"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 25/09/17(sae change)

I'll speak about the origins of the phrase a sea change, because it sens to get bandied about these days, and thanks to linguistic inflation, as we call it, it's just lost a little bit of its value, a bit like tragic and hero. They do get used a little bit too much so that when something really tragic happens or somebody really is genuinely heroic, they tend to have lost their power, and sea change possibbly one of those. It's a big thing in business speak these days just to mean any sort of big change, but a sea change is actually something really fundamental that changes in your life or in a particular situation. And like many of our colourful phrases, it goes back to Shakespeare. Not sure if he coined it, I think he did in this instance. He, in the Oxford English Dictionary, is responsible for 1610 first records of words. So, it goes back to The Tempest, in Ariel's song to Ferdinand - "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 reach and strange". So here,sea change is more than just a change in appearance or functioning of something, it was a really radical change in the nature and composition of something - "of his bones are coral made." So the dort of fundamental change, perhaps, that might come from long-term immertion in the sea, that was the idea. And it's a wonderful mataphor, really, but actually, it flew below the radar for a very long time after Shakespear - it didn't get picked up again until the 1900s, when it still kept that fundamental, overwhelmiing change. But then, as I say, as it's gained more popularity, it's become used a little bit more liberally and a little bit more freely. But I like the origin meaning - somrthing that is so overwhelming, just like the sea, that it's really impacted your life in a very big way.