Relating to the ancient city of Gadara or describing a sudden, headlong, or irresistible rush (from the biblical story of the Gadarene swine).
Derived from Gadara, an ancient city in the Decapolis region (modern-day Umm Qais in Jordan). The figurative use comes from the New Testament story where demons drove a herd of swine down a steep cliff into the sea.
When people describe a 'Gadarene rush' toward disaster, they're referencing a 2,000-year-old Bible story—it's one of the few cases where a biblical tale became a vocabulary word for any mass movement toward something self-destructive.
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