Definition
Havoc refers to great destruction, disorder, or confusion caused by a particular event or situation.
Pronunciation
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Excerpts from News Articles
Xynthia was a perfect storm of hurricane-force winds, surging seas and driving rain that smashed into the western coasts of France and Spain overnight, wreaking havoc as far inland as Germany and leaving more than a million households without power. Fifty people were killed.
Why are you suffering? Because the liquor that smoothly passed your lips is now wreaking havoc in your body, causing dehydration, stomach distress and inflammation. These ailments peak about the time all the alcohol leaves your body.
But if sargassum moves closer to the coast, the seaweed can wreak havoc on local ecosystems, smothering coral reefs and altering the water's pH balance. Once ashore, clumps of sargassum can choke local economies by closing tourism sites, cutting off marinas and constricting fishing yields.
By the time Maurice was admitted to the intensive care unit, plasmodium parasites had been wreaking havoc on his red blood cells for nearly a year, multiplying in his liver and threatening to shut down many of his major organs, including his kidneys. His face and eyes were yellow from jaundice. As his hemoglobin levels plummeted in response to the intravenous meds administered as treatment, four days of blood transfusions helped save his life. But to Maurice, his brush with death was simply the price of doing business.
The game immediately transports you to the world of Sanctuary, where the demon Lilith and other evil creatures have escaped their underworld kingdom and are wreaking havoc on the land. Gone are the colorful, fairy-tale graphics of Diablo 3: Instead, Blizzard has crafted a brutal land of ice and misery. Combat remains much the same, but a vast amount of content hides in each area, making the game feel even bigger than previous installments. Even after over ten hours of solo gameplay during the first beta weekend, I felt I had barely scratched the surface of Sanctuary.
When World War II veteran Eugene Stoner invented a certain assault rifle, he likely did not envision the havoc it would later bring upon a civilian population. In the 1950s, he worked as an engineer for the small arms manufacturer ArmaLite and sought to develop an assault rifle exclusively for the army, an American answer to the Kalashnikov, the legendary Soviet assault rifle.
That seems logical. Prising the two apart just weeks after forcing them together would create havoc in financial markets and potentially put Swiss taxpayers on the hook for more money. That’s not an option for the government, however unpopular the deal. (By Liam Proud)
More than 50 people have died from the tornadoes and thunderstorms in the past two weeks, with the latest powerful storm system wreaking havoc in states including Alabama, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas on Friday. One man survived by hiding in his bathtub, while a separate storm caused a tiger to escape a zoo.
This is why it is imperative that we do not get distracted by the center ring of this circus again. Yes, what is happening to the ex-president is historic and should be covered – but proportionally, as his minions across the country continue to wreak havoc on our democracy and quite frankly our security. We must pay attention to all three rings of the circus.
Some of those code words are really creating havoc in the white community because of the gun laws that are being passed around the country. The underlying element in those gun laws is race. It’s not Second Amendment. It’s all about how we have to defend our communities, why we have to defend our schools, even though, by and large, those rationales for the defense are hollow.
While Covid restrictions were making life a misery for many of the players, the pandemic was creating havoc for the firms bankrolling their salaries.
The danger hasn’t completely passed. Water is still cascading around three sides of their home, which is sandwiched between storm runoff, a drainage ditch, and the Fresno River. Jason’s worried about the snow still waiting to melt, and whether the area will get hit with another late-season storm. Even a smaller-scale event could wreak havoc on the sodden hillsides, he said.
This year, by contrast, there were breaks of up to a month between each storm. Despite the storms' havoc , none that hit California were technically considered "extreme," Swain said.
Rastogi also sounds the alarm, and says that lantana is not the only invasive species of concern. He says that while there is more focus on lantana, other invasive shrub species like Ageratum conyzoides and Pogostemon benghalensis have started wreaking havoc on the biodiversity of tiger habitats.
There was something to the cover’s panther that was evocative of the creature who roams the book: its beauty and danger, and even—how to put this?—a kind of bemused, wise confidence. It is hard to know whether it is about to wreak havoc , or stretch out for a nap.
Meteorite impacts can be cataclysmic events in the history of a planet, melting rock, changing atmospheric chemistry, and wreaking general havoc .
If we really do go back to ultra-low interest rates it could mean a reinflation of the bubble economy. But do we really want to go there? With last month’s banking crisis – which is not necessarily over – we have seen what havoc it can create when investors come to take low interest rates for granted and are then caught out when rates rise even to modest levels. If inflation is rapidly brought under control – and that is a very big if – it might help if central banks resolved never to lower rates below, say, two per cent ever again.
The only problem, besides traffic havoc caused by security, was the threat of rain, said Blewitt. On Thursday night, she said, residents will put out Child of Prague statues in keeping with a folklore belief that this increases the chances of good weather.
All seven of the critical-rated bugs are remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities, so while Microsoft hasn't detected any in-the-wild exploits for these — yet — miscreants could use these to cause serious havoc . Particularly as Exploit Wednesday follows quickly after Patch Tuesday.
The decision resuscitates a “zombie law” from the 1870s, the Comstock Act, which hasn’t been used for nearly a century. The legal equivalent of a zombie flick, the act essentially resurrects baseless arguments and once-dead law to wreak havoc on our settled legal principles. And the real horror is the damage that could be done to women’s ability to obtain safe, reliable and life-saving reproductive care.
Although these cases are each very different, they are examples of the bitter harvest that the region is reaping as a result of the spread of a virulent strain of populism over the past three decades. That strain, largely rooted in the citizens’ legitimate exasperation with corruption, has wreaked havoc with party systems and weakened the very institutions necessary to fight corruption and channel social demands in peaceful ways.
When we place too high a priority on the speed of our email replies, we destroy our ability to focus. Interruptions derail our train of thought and wreak havoc on our progress. When you know you don’t have to reply to emails right away, you can actually find flow and dedicate your full attention where you wish.
While the physical causes of postpartum depression remain mysterious, researchers believe the condition is caused by hormone fluctuations during and especially after pregnancy. For example, research suggests that sex hormones like estrogen, which reach high levels during pregnancy and then fall precipitously after delivery, as well as hormones like oxytocin that are involved in lactation and maternal-baby bonding, likely play an important role. During and after pregnancy, the brain is on a hormonal roller coaster, and this can wreak havoc on mental health.
Last year was a near-normal season, with 14 named storms. Still, Hurricane Ian, initially rated a Category 4, was recently reassessed as a Category 5 after having wreaked havoc in Florida. Ian was proof that it doesn’t require an above-average season to get above-average impacts or to spell calamity.
After several hours with the two brothers, Meng convinced them to stop for gas. It was while they were parked at the gas station that Meng made what he describes as “the most important decision of my life.” Meng was worried that if the brothers escaped, they would cause more havoc .
But, yes, there can be too much of a good thing. If inflation rises too fast, like it did in the late 1970s and more recently amid the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing prices can wreak havoc on household and company budgets as things cost more. Wages may rise in response, but they tend to lag far behind costs.
British traveller James Stickley, 23, said he was “super excited”. “I’ve obviously heard a lot about it. Everyone seems pretty happy. I haven’t started drinking yet so I’m sure that’ll make it more interesting.” His friend Dylan, also from the UK, was ready to “take on everyone”, adding: “As we get more beers down us … we’ll start some real havoc .”
More storms could strike South Florida on Friday after monumental flooding wreaked havoc on Fort Lauderdale and surrounding communities, closing schools and government buildings and sending hundreds of residents to seek refuge at emergency shelters.
Otherwise, they wrote, "the district court's lawless opinion will empower any plaintiff to grind drug approvals to a halt, disrupting patients' access to critical medicines. That outcome would chill crucial research and development, undermine the viability of investments in this important sector, and wreak havoc on drug development and approval generally, causing widespread harm to patients, providers, and the entire pharmaceutical industry."
Several US cities have sued automakers Kia Corp and Hyundai Motor after thieves in America were easily able to steal the cars, go on joyrides and wreak havoc by damaging local areas along with wasting police time.
Germany’s nuclear exit was delayed to this year after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine wreaked havoc in energy markets.
A rapid spring snowmelt is already wreaking havoc from the south-west to the Rockies. Emergency crews in New Mexico have had to perform water rescues from submerged vehicles as Arizona residents spent days working to stave off flood waters from their homes.
Given the US track record of wreaking havoc in both Colombia and Venezuela, it would seem not too much to ask.
Three years on from the declaration of the worst pandemic in living memory, we are still feeling the effects. More than 6.8 million people are dead, 1.6 billion students have had their education disrupted, and the global economy will have lost more than {$}12.5 trillion in 2024, according to IMF estimates published last year. Covid-19 wreaked havoc on incomes, health services, mental health and our children’s education – we must do what we can to make sure this never happens again.
Bitcoin fans have long highlighted its potential to act as a "digital gold" because it's divisible, scarce and doesn't rely on a central issuer. They also once argued that bitcoin offered a hedge against equities, but last year's market havoc threw cold water on that idea as the cryptocurrency's correlation with stocks hit an all-time high . At the end of March, that correlation fell to its lowest since 2021 , while bitcoin's correlation with gold has been climbing.