disaster
Americannoun
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a calamitous event, especially one occurring suddenly and causing great loss of life, damage, or hardship, as a flood, airplane crash, or business failure.
- Synonyms:
- affliction, adversity, reverse, blow, accident, mishap, misadventure, misfortune, mischance
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Obsolete. an unfavorable aspect of a star or planet.
noun
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an occurrence that causes great distress or destruction
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a thing, project, etc, that fails or has been ruined
Related Words
Disaster, calamity, catastrophe, cataclysm refer to adverse happenings often occurring suddenly and unexpectedly. A disaster may be caused by carelessness, negligence, bad judgment, or the like, or by natural forces, as a hurricane or flood: a railroad disaster. Calamity suggests great affliction, either personal or general; the emphasis is on the grief or sorrow caused: the calamity of losing a child. Catastrophe refers especially to the tragic outcome of a personal or public situation; the emphasis is on the destruction or irreplaceable loss: the catastrophe of a defeat in battle. Cataclysm, physically an earth-shaking change, refers to a personal or public upheaval of unparalleled violence: a cataclysm that turned his life in a new direction.
Other Word Forms
- disastrous adjective
- predisaster noun
Etymology
Origin of disaster
First recorded in 1585–95; from Middle French desastre, from Italian disastro, from dis- dis- 1 + astro “star” (from Latin astrum, from Greek ástron )
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.
"I don't know much about football, but that's a bit of disaster, isn't it?"
From BBC
Less than three weeks before it burst, Indian and Swiss disaster experts journeyed to South Lhonak Lake to put up a weather monitoring station, the first step toward installing an early warning system.
“If he’d waited two or three weeks, it would have been a disaster. Once the dominoes start toppling, they just start toppling—and that line is shorter than anybody thinks,” Buffett said of Powell’s actions.
From Barron's
The whole afternoon had been a ridiculous disaster.
From Literature
Air Canada said Monday that CEO Michael Rousseau will retire later this year, an announcement following controversy over his failure to issue condolences both in English and French for a fatal airport disaster.
From Barron's
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.
