First recorded in 1925–30
First recorded in 1935–40
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The pilots, wearing parachutes, put the plane into a 418-mile-an-hour power dive, but the fatal vibration never showed up.
From Time Magazine Archive
The minuscule sub survives the 3G power dive into the artery, and glides idyllically down a clear stream filled with pink and white corpuscles that look like house-sized globules of tapioca.
From Time Magazine Archive
Suddenly the leader went into a power dive and pointed directly where I was standing.
From Time Magazine Archive
The chins fell agape as his plane, nose down, roared earthward in a power dive, pulled up and over in a perfectly executed loop.
From Time Magazine Archive
Suddenly he nosed down and shot for the ground, ten miles below, in a power dive.
From The Black Star Passes by Campbell, John Wood
It can soar above the highest Rockies and power-dive upon its prey at more than 12,0 m.p.h.
From Time Magazine Archive
Something inside my brain was sucking all my strength in one tremendous, surging power-dive of wish fulfillment.
From The Very Black by Evans, Dean
The ship was lying over on its back in a few seconds, and before I could catch a breath it suddenly whipped over and blasted toward Earth in a screeching, hissing power-dive.
From Larson's Luck by Vance, Gerald
Five minutes after the first two, another lone bomber power-dived in over List from due west.
From Time Magazine Archive
In Rehoboth, Mass., a reckless chicken hawk power-dived into a henhouse, was captured by quick-thinking hens who ran out, slammed the door.
From Time Magazine Archive
The Japanese power-dived upon Nanking, Chinese anti-aircraft guns on the hills around the capital opened up, and reserve Chinese pursuit fighters took the air, climbing to tear like clawing condors at the Japanese bombers' flanks.
From Time Magazine Archive
In 1958, at the controls of his de Havilland Dove on a flight to Europe, he was attacked by Syrian MIGS, escaped only by power-diving toward the desert floor and zigzagging across the border.
From Time Magazine Archive
In the overall industrial picture, inventories continued their power-diving decline, dropped another $700 million in February, showing that U.S. production had been cut much more than sales.
From Time Magazine Archive
Messrs. Mayell's and Alley's films of the power-diving Japanese planes will be something to see in the U. S. next week if local police departments do not censor them as too inflammatory.
From Time Magazine Archive
The Airacobras rapidly overtook the bomber, even though she was power-diving far beyond her limit of stability.
From A Yankee Flier in Italy by Montgomery, Rutherford George
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.
