Earth & SkyGreek → English
Disaster
/dɪˈzæstər/noun
A sudden event causing great damage, loss or failure.
The Greek roots
ἄστρον
ástron
star
Literally: “ill star”
Follow a root:ἄστρον11 words
The story of the word
Half Latin, half Greek: dis- meaning ill is the Latin part, and astro comes from astrum, which Rome had taken from Greek ἄστρον. So a disaster is something that happened under a bad star. English took the word from Italian disastro in the 1590s, when a hostile planetary conjunction was still an ordinary explanation for a bad outcome; Shakespeare has Edmund sneer at exactly that belief in King Lear.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Italian → French → English
- First recorded
- 1590s
Same family
astronomyasteroidastrologyastronaut
In a sentence
The launch was a disaster and the second one, eight months later, worked perfectly.