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disaster.

An unexpected natural or man-made catastrophe of substantial extent causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life or sometimes permanent change to the natural environment.

8 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/dɪˈzɑːs.təː/Received-Pronunciation[dɪˈzɑːs.təː]Received-Pronunciation/dɪˈzas.təː/Northern-England/dəˈzäːs.təː/
  1. An unexpected natural or man-made catastrophe of substantial extent causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life or sometimes permanent change to the natural environment.

    countable · uncountable
    People would suffer disasters when society's morality degenerates.
  2. An unfortunate or unpleasant occurrence, especially one resulting from an accident or something going wrong.

    countable · uncountable
  3. An wholly unsatisfactory result caused by something going wrong or being done poorly; a flop or failure.

    countable · uncountable
    the cake was a disaster.
  4. A skateboard trick involving a 180-degree ollie, landing on the center of the board with the front trucks facing towards the ramp and the back trucks over the lip. The skater then leans forwards to return in the ramp.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From Middle French desastre, from Italian disastro, from dis- + astro (“star”), from Latin astrum (“star”), from Ancient Greek ἄστρον (ástron, “star”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂stḗr.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.