tailspin

tail +‎ spin

tailspin (plural tailspins)

1. (aviation) The rapid, uncontrollable descent of an aircraft in a steep spiral.

   The loss of the third engine threw the plane into a tailspin.

2. (figuratively) A severe mental or emotional collapse; emotional breakdown.

   Just hours after leaving the institution, she suffered another tailspin.

3. (figuratively) Any sharp, sustained, often uncontrollable descent or decline.

   The present stock tailspin proves bankruptcy is imminent.

   • 2007, Perspectives on climate change, Washington : U.S. G.P.O., →ISBN, page 49:

     But I was reading a statement that either you made or was part of your movie, “An Inconvenient Truth”, and it said we have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.

   • 2010 September, Chris Sommers, "Merge", St. Louis magazine, ISSN 1090-5723, volume 16, issue 9, page 77:

     St. Louis, the fourth-largest U.S. city in 1900, is fading fast […] . Jobs, and airline, an educated population—all gone or in a tailspin.

tailspin (third-person singular simple present tailspins, present participle tailspinning, simple past and past participle tailspun or tailspinned)

1. Of an aircraft: to go into a rapid, uncontrollable descent in a steep spiral.
2. (figurative) To go into a sharp, sustained, often uncontrollable descent or decline.

• downward spiral
• nosedive

• alpinist, anti-slip, antislip, pintails, tailpins