Wiktionary
n. 1 (context aviation English) The downward, corkscrew-motion of a disabled aircraft which is unrecoverably headed for a crash. 2 (context pairs figure skating English) A manoeuvre in which a male skater spins in place while holding one hand of his female skating partner as she circles around him with one skate on the ice and one leg extended outward parallel to the ice surface, all the while slowly lowering herself until her back almost touches the ice surface. 3 (context idiomatic by extension English) The situation or course of action of one who is on a path toward some sort of inevitable catastrophic failure.
Wikipedia
Death spiral may refer to:
- Aircraft flight:
- Graveyard spiral
- Spiral dive
- Death spiral (figure skating), an element of pair skating
- Death spiral (insurance), an insurance plan whose costs are rapidly increasing
- Death spiral financing
- Ant mill, a behavioral phenomenon in ants
Death spiral is a condition of the insurance market in which costs rapidly increase as a result of changes in the covered population. It is the result of adverse selection in insurance policies in which lower risk policy holders choose to change policies or be uninsured. The term is found in the academic literature at least as early as Cutler and Zeckhauser's 1998 paper, "Adverse Selection in Health Insurance," which refers explicitly to an "adverse selection death spiral."
Death spiral is a required element of pair skating performed with the man in a pivot position, one toe anchored in the ice. Holding his hand, the woman circles her partner on a deep edge with her body almost parallel to the ice. In 2011, the ISU introduced a requirement that the woman's head must at some time reach the level of her skating knee in order to receive a value. The man should be in a full pivot position, and the death spiral must be held for a minimum amount of rotation, depending on the level.
Usage examples of "death spiral".
The deadly missile struck his F-16 near the tail section and sent the fighter staggering downward, losing altitude in a death spiral.
More than once he was told the story of the person who had taken an ultralite into such a disastrous death spiral that the simulator had torn off its mountings and crashed through the glass wall next to it, cutting some bystanders and breaking the flier's arm.
More than once he was told the story of the person who had taken an ultralite into such a disastrous death spiral that the simulator had torn off its mountings and crashed through the glass wall next to it, cutting some bystanders and breaking the flier’.
And indeed these men had the dangerous look that Frank associated with machismo, the look of men who oppressed their women so cruelly that naturally the women struck back where they could, terrorizing sons who then terrorized wives who terrorized sons and so on and so on, in an endless death spiral of twisted love and sex hatred.
Of course, Daddy was there to take over if I screwed up -- if I got us climbing so fast that we stalled out or if I bucked us into the beginnings of a death spiral.
The wyvern's broad, crocodilian head shook like a shark and ripped most of the wing off, leaving the mortally wounded ray to writhe in a death spiral to the reef below.
In any case we're all in the bardo together now, and headed for the lower realms again, at best the realm of the human, but possibly spinning down the death spiral into the hellworlds always underfoot, we may have done it and are in the spin you can't pull out of, humanity lost to us for a time even as a possibility, so much harm have we done.
The green mountains rushed up to meet them as the chopper began its sickening death spiral.