chaos
n. uncountablen. complete disorder and confusion. You use this word when everything is happening at once and nothing is organized or under control.
n. complete disorder and confusion. It describes situations where systems of control, organization, or predictability have entirely broken down.
The classroom turned into complete chaos when the teacher left.
The sudden cancellation of all outbound flights caused absolute chaos at the airport terminals.
While the mathematician saw an underlying pattern in the data, to the untrained eye the fluctuating numbers appeared as pure, unadulterated chaos.
Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek χάος (kháos, “vast chasm, void”). Doublet of gas, which was borrowed through Dutch. In Early Modern English, used in the sense of the original Greek word. In the meaning "primordial matter" from the 16th century. Figurative usage in the sense "confusion, disorder" from the 17th century. The technical sense in mathematics and science dates from the 1960s.
Frequently modified by absolute adjectives like 'complete', 'total', or 'absolute'.