pandemonium
/ˌpandɪˈməʊnɪəm
/noun [mass noun]
Wild and noisy disorder or confusion; uproar: there was complete pandemonium—everyone just panicked...
- On the collective level, poison gas created confusion and pandemonium.
- Uproar and pandemonium followed, matched only by that of the previous week when Mr. Loy won twice.
- Let me tell you about the non-stop insanity, the constant chaos, the perpetual pandemonium.
Origin
Mid 17th century: modern Latin (denoting the place of all demons, in Milton's Paradise Lost), from pan- 'all' + Greek daimōn 'demon'.
John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, first printed in 1667, tells the story of the Fall of Man. In Book I the angels who rebelled against God build Satan's new palace and capital, Pandemonium. Milton coined the name, meaning ‘the place of all the demons’, from Greek pan ‘all’ and daimōn ‘demon’. From the mid 18th century the word came to refer to other places that were centres of wickedness and then to noisy, disorderly places. In the early 19th century it developed its usual modern sense of ‘noisy disorder, bedlam, chaos’.