A disaster is an event that causes great trouble or damage, or something that goes badly wrong.
What Does Disaster Mean?
A disaster is a big problem, much bigger than a mistake or a mishap. It can be a serious event, like a flood or a storm. It can also be a joke, when something goes comically wrong.
The cake was a disaster. Somebody had used salt instead of sugar.
And here's the odd part: the word began in the stars. A disaster was once a "bad star".
🔊 Pronunciation
diz-AS-ter
The stress is on the middle part: AS. The first part sounds like diz, as in dizzy.
🗣️ Natural Examples
The class picnic was a disaster: it rained, the sandwiches got soggy, and the ants arrived early.
Our school held a drill to practise what to do in a disaster.
The haircut was a total disaster, but it grew back.
I forgot my project, so the morning was disastrous.
Luckily, we avoided disaster by finding the lost ticket.
🛠️ How to Use It
Disaster is a common word, used in the news, at school and in everyday jokes.
- As a noun: a disaster, the disaster, a disaster for the team.
- For something that went very wrong, with humour: The party was a disaster.
- For a serious event: a natural disaster is one caused by nature, such as a flood or an earthquake.
- With avoid or prevent: avoid disaster, prevent a disaster.
🤝 Common Word Partners
- a natural disaster
- a total disaster
- a complete disaster
- avoid disaster
- disaster relief
- a disaster waiting to happen
🌳 Word Family
- disaster (noun): the event. The flood was a disaster.
- disastrous (adjective): causing a disaster, or very bad. It was a disastrous idea.
- disastrously (adverb): in a very bad way. The plan went disastrously wrong.
👯 Similar and Related Words
- mishap: a small accident or piece of bad luck. A spilled drink is a mishap.
- accident: something bad that happens by chance. It can be small or serious.
- catastrophe: a very large and terrible disaster. It sounds even bigger than disaster.
- crisis: a time of great danger or difficulty, when something has to be decided quickly.
- fiasco: a total failure, often a funny one. The talent show was a fiasco.
The difference is size. A mishap is small, a disaster is big, and a catastrophe is huge.
⚠️ Common Mistakes
No extra E in the adjective.
❌ disasterous
✅ disastrous
Spelling.
❌ disater, dissaster, disastar
✅ disaster
Big word, big problem.
✅ My pencil broke. That's annoying.
✅ The flood closed the school for a week. That's a disaster.
Using disaster for a tiny problem can be a joke between friends, but the word works best when the problem is big.
💬 In a Conversation
Sam: How was the cake?
Mia: A disaster.
Sam: Was it burnt?
Mia: No. I used salt instead of sugar.
Sam: Did anyone eat it?
Mia: The dog tried. Now the dog is a disaster too.
🕵️ Where Does It Come From?
Disaster came into English in the 1590s from French, and French took it from the Italian word disastro, which means "ill-starred".
The word is built from two parts:
- dis-, a prefix that here means "bad"
- astro, which means "star" or "planet"
People used to believe that the stars and planets controlled what happened on Earth. If something terrible happened, they blamed an unlucky star or an unfriendly planet. A disaster was an event caused by a bad star.
Like quarantine, disaster reached English from Italian.
💡 The OddLingo Trick
Look at the middle of the word: astro. It's the same word root as astronaut and astronomy.
A dis-aster is a "bad star". When you see aster, think of a star going wrong.