Chrysalism
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A state of transition or development. dated, rare, uncountable
"Mrs. Fuggleston, however, was not to be caught so easily: the night was rainy– and, long before Mr. Gervaise Skinner reached the green-room, the public vehicle of Taunton, which during the last few years, had ripened from the chrysalism of a sedan-chair into the gayer beauties of a fly, had borne the divine fair one to her home in the costume which had so captivated my hero, […]"
- 2 A state of dormancy or rest. dated, rare, uncountable
"Since Mr. Head's arrival in the woods, the weather had been uncertain; the snow was slushy, and walking far impracticable without the aid of snow-shoes, of which he had a horror; but on the 6th of March the world assumed another aspect, the snow clothed in glass, and the bay was frozen. A new pleasure was opened to him, he put on his skates, and seemed to have found a new sense; he had got wings and had left the state of chrysalism."
- 3 The sheltered tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm. neologism, rare, uncountable
"Chrysalism overcame me, the feeling of amniotic tranquility you get when experiencing a thunderstorm from indoors."
Example
More examples"Mrs. Fuggleston, however, was not to be caught so easily: the night was rainy– and, long before Mr. Gervaise Skinner reached the green-room, the public vehicle of Taunton, which during the last few years, had ripened from the chrysalism of a sedan-chair into the gayer beauties of a fly, had borne the divine fair one to her home in the costume which had so captivated my hero, […]"
Etymology
From chrysalis (“butterfly or moth pupa”) + -ism. The thunderstorm sense was coined by Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows creator John Koenig in 2012.
More for "chrysalism"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.