DISASTER • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Disaster

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/dɪzˈæstər/ Listen

noun

Disaster n.

An unpropitious or baleful aspect of a planet or star; malevolent influence of a heavenly body; hence, an ill portent. (Obs.) "Disasters in the sun."

An adverse or unfortunate event, esp. a sudden and extraordinary misfortune; a calamity; a serious mishap. "But noble souls, through dust and heat, Rise from disaster and defeat The stronger."

Synonyms: Calamity; misfortune; mishap; mischance; visitation; misadventure; ill luck. See Calamity.

verb

Disaster v. t.

To blast by the influence of a baleful star. (Obs.)

To bring harm upon; to injure. (R.)

See images of 'Disaster'

Etymology of 'Disaster'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Disaster" Quotes from Famous Books

... the secret; so she wept in silence and upbraiding herself fell to thinking, "Wherefore did I disclose this secret to him and beget envy and jealousy of Ali Baba? this be the fruit thereof and hence the disaster that hath come down upon me." She spent the rest of the night in bitter tears and early on the morrow tried in hottest hurry to Ali Baba and prayed that he would go forth in quest of his brother; so he strove to console her and straightway set out ...

— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... insurrection at this critical moment by the negroes of the Southern States would have thrown every thing into confusion, and consequently it was to have prevented the choice of electors in the whole or the greater part of the States to the south of the Potomac. Such a disaster must have tended directly to injure the interests of Mr. Jefferson, and to promote the slender possibility of a second election of Mr. Adams." And, to be sure, the United-States Gazette followed up the thing with a good, single-minded party malice which cannot be surpassed in these ...

— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... the personal peculiarities or possibilities of a husband, that she had awakened almost with surprise one morning to the knowledge that she was miserable. It was not so much that her romance had met with open disaster as that it had simply faded away. This gradual fading away of sentiment, which she had accepted at the time as only one of the inevitable stages in the slow process of emotional adjustment, would perhaps have ...

— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... circumstances, but when morning came they were in a terribly bad predicament. Not one of them carried a watch, or he might have known that it was about three o'clock, and very dark, when a worse disaster than the visit of the locusts took place. By five or six minutes past three it was all done completely, and it was the work of a ...

— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard

... alike in this,—that each exhibits a set of characters struggling vainly to avert a predetermined doom; but in this essential point they differ,—that whereas the characters in melodrama are drifted to disaster in spite of themselves, the characters in tragedy go down to destruction because of themselves. In tragedy the characters determine and control the plot; in melodrama the plot determines and controls the characters. ...

— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

More quotes...