cataclysm
Americannoun
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any violent upheaval, especially one of a social or political nature.
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Physical Geography. a sudden and violent physical action producing changes in the earth's surface.
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an extensive flood; deluge.
noun
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a violent upheaval, esp of a political, military, or social nature
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a disastrous flood; deluge
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geology another name for catastrophe
Related Words
See disaster.
Other Word Forms
- cataclysmic adjective
- cataclysmically adverb
Etymology
Origin of cataclysm
1625–35; < Late Latin cataclysmos (Vulgate) < Greek kataklysmós flood (akin to kataklýzein to flood), equivalent to kata- cata- + klysmós a washing
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.
If Blackstone and other lenders recover all or most of their financing, it would buttress their case that investors have overreacted to software cataclysm concerns.
From Barron's
No deliberate cruelty wounds this dreamy girl, only carelessness and the cataclysm of her mother’s death, which signals “the last day of childhood.”
The economic cataclysm caused by artificial intelligence may never come.
The frantic warnings of a Cosmic Weatherman go unheard as winter, confoundingly, follows spring, and summer arrives as a double cataclysm of fire and floods.
I called Whitney again to ask her, as I was asking others, if she knew anyone who had anticipated the subprime mortgage cataclysm, thus setting himself up in advance to make a fortune from it.
From Literature
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.
