tailspin

plural tailspins

1. aeronauticsThe rapid, uncontrollable descent of an aircraft in a steep spiral.

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

2. figurativelyA severe mental or emotional collapse; emotional breakdown.

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

3. figurativelyAny sharp, sustained, often uncontrollable descent or decline.

   The present stock tailspin proves bankruptcy is imminent.

   2 more examples

   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.

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

   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.

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

present singular third person tailspins · participle present tailspinning · participle past tailspun · past tailspun · participle past tailspinned · past tailspinned

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