How to Use paroxysm in a Sentence

paroxysm

noun
Definition of paroxysmnext
Synonyms for paroxysmnext
  • He went into paroxysms of laughter.
  • Still, Abreu isn’t the player that inspires fist pumps or a paroxysm of groans from the rest of the room.
    — Michael Beller, SI.com, 22 Feb. 2018
  • Everything pushed to paroxysm, to the very sources of the tragic.
    — Mike Fischer, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 1 July 2017
  • This alone would send many in-laws into paroxysms of joy.
    — Amy Dickinson, chicagotribune.com, 19 Apr. 2018
  • Yes, my son falls into paroxysms of despair over the feel of his socks.
    — Nicole Graev Lipson, Washington Post, 28 Feb. 2020
  • Lenin fell off it, hurled to the ground by the townsfolk of Lanchkhuti in the first joyful paroxysm of their liberation.
    — Christopher Helman, Forbes, 19 Apr. 2023
  • Just the equivalent of a few grains of salt can send you into sudden paroxysms of heaven; a few more grains will kill you.
    — Andrew Sullivan, Daily Intelligencer, 20 Feb. 2018
  • When the fan was turned on, the strips fluttered, which sent the English bulldog into a paroxysm of both agitation and joy.
    — Cady Lang, Time, 14 Oct. 2019
  • This, in turn, touched off a paroxysm of media takes about whether such confrontations broke the bounds of civility.
    — Jason Linkins, The New Republic, 9 Oct. 2021
  • The result is an epic paroxysm which blows out a massive wave of material, expanding in a sphere around the star.
    — Phil Plait, Discover Magazine, 10 Oct. 2012
  • For the left, this is just the latest paroxysm of a dysfunctional and doomed capitalism.
    — The Economist, 14 Nov. 2019
  • The resulting paroxysm of an action sequence, one that would be easy to adapt to other movie genres, is novel and great.
    — Jacqueline Detwiler, Popular Mechanics, 19 Oct. 2015
  • That may be sufficient to save the lives of many, either from the paroxysm itself or any subsequent tsunami.
    — New York Times, 18 Mar. 2021
  • As these images played to a global audience riveted by the drama at the airport, the West, in a paroxysm of regret, opened its arms to Afghan refugees.
    — New York Times, 10 Dec. 2021
  • Even with all that intensity of eruption, the paroxysm was over in only 50 minutes.
    — Erik Klemetti, Discover Magazine, 3 Dec. 2015
  • That match included a paroxysm of goals — five in 30 minutes — and then a barren stretch that taunted both teams, one more than another.
    — Ben Shpigel, New York Times, 3 Dec. 2022
  • And every few months, photos of Princess Diana in sweatshirts and bike shorts will send the fashionable and the online into paroxysms of delight.
    — Madeleine Aggeler, New York Times, 31 Mar. 2023
  • Sittenfeld sets her action in 2018, decades after that paroxysm of genius has passed.
    — Ron Charles, Washington Post, 28 Mar. 2023
  • And in these early stages, both customers and analysts appear to see the delays as normal—and preferable to combustive paroxysm.
    — Sarah Scoles, WIRED, 6 July 2018
  • From the moment the signal is detected, everyone has up to 10 minutes to react before the paroxysm arrives.
    — New York Times, 18 Mar. 2021
  • The events themselves took a matter of minutes to unfold in a paroxysm of one-sided gunfire that snuffed out more than a dozen lives, each one of them a new martyr in Northern Ireland’s somber annals of loss.
    — Alan Cowell, BostonGlobe.com, 29 Jan. 2022
  • But nothing prepared her for what happened on Aug. 26 in Salesforce.com Inc., when its quarterly results ignited a paroxysm of buying that pushed the shares 26% higher in a day.
    — Sarah Ponczek, Bloomberg.com, 5 Sep. 2020
  • The army’s withdrawal from the talks deals a blow to the attempts to decisively end the war, which has released a paroxysm of violence and chaos that have killed hundreds of people and displaced millions more.
    — Abdi Latif Dahir, New York Times, 31 May 2023
  • Much better, the patient exclaimed, but then exploded into a paroxysm of coughing.
    — New York Times, 16 Feb. 2022
  • In July 2019, a paroxysm killed a hiker and injured several others.
    — New York Times, 18 Mar. 2021
  • And then came Syria’s equalizer, sending the crowds into paroxysms of delight and disbelief.
    — Louisa Loveluck, Washington Post, 5 Sep. 2017
  • Immune System Gone Wrong When the paroxysms finally stopped, the man felt exhausted — as if all his energy had left with the contents of his digestive system.
    — Lisa Sanders, New York Times, 18 Mar. 2020
  • When word got out last month that Angel’s Share might close after nearly 30 years, the city — or at least a very vocal slice that was devoted to artisanal cocktails — spun into a paroxysm of despair.
    — New York Times, 8 Apr. 2022
  • On Monday, the army deployed soldiers to carry out regular patrols of the city alongside state and local police for the first time in five years, after a paroxysm of violence killed 29 people over the course of five days.
    — Robbie Whelan, WSJ, 5 July 2017
  • By the end of the 1970s, Italy was exhausted by ideological conflict that had resulted in the paroxysms of terrorist violence the country was living through at the time.
    — Alexander Stille, The New Republic, 13 June 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'paroxysm.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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