pandemonium
Americannoun
-
wild confusion; uproar
-
a place of uproar and chaos
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of pandemonium
1660–70; after Pandaemonium, Milton's name in Paradise Lost for the capital of hell; see pan-, demon, -ium
Explanation
Pandemonium is chaos, total and utter craziness — like the stampede after your team won the championship, when everyone spilled onto the field at once, bouncing off each other. If you look carefully at the word pandemonium, you’ll see the word demon inside it. This makes sense, since the word pandemonium was coined in Milton’s Paradise Lost, where it was the name of the palace built in the middle of Hell. Milton wrote back in the 17th century. Nowadays, pandemonium crops up whenever journalists are describing a chaotic scene. High school students have been heard to use it to describe their lunchroom.
Vocabulary lists containing pandemonium
Words from "The Avengers"
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Refugee
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"The Odyssey" by Homer, Books 8–13
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The man who created “The Rite of Spring”—a ballet whose pounding dissonances and unconventional rhythms caused pandemonium at its 1913 Paris premiere—now insisted that the bolder the creative ambition, the tighter the frame must be.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 11, 2026
“There is a certain level of pandemonium, as they say in wrestling, that’s needed to get people excited,” Iglesias said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 5, 2026
The secretary has worked to make herself the face of these invasions, which have invariably led to pandemonium.
From Salon ● Feb. 18, 2026
Amine Adli prodded home to make it 3-2 with nearly the last touch of the game after a scramble in the box following a long throw, sparking scenes of pandemonium.
From Barron's ● Jan. 24, 2026
Instantly, pandemonium ensued as everyone ran this way and that, shouting at one another.
From "The Bad Beginning" by Lemony Snicket
My friends called these pandemoniums the hells of Montezuma.
From Los Gringos Or, An Inside View of Mexico and California, with Wanderings in Peru, Chili, and Polynesia by H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
Forty or fifty years before, the guard-ships were generally little better than floating pandemoniums.
From The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 1 by Frederick Whymper
They were all completely open at the front, with their remarkable contents, pandemoniums of merchandise, exposed upon a precarious sidewalk of uneven parallel boards elevated two or three feet above the road.
From Cytherea by Joseph Hergesheimer
Again, where it was entered by minor cañons, it became a breach through crowded pandemoniums of ruined architectures and forsaken, frowning imageries.
From Overland by J. W. (John William) De Forest
He must have fought for life in the depths and pandemoniums, to achieve that excellence of equipment which makes men turn to him for his word and his strength.
From Child and Country A Book of the Younger Generation by Will Levington Comfort
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
