Disaster Area: Calamity, Catastrophe, and Crisis: Disaster Words

Whether your soufflé collapsed or there's an asteroid headed for the Earth, one of these words is sure to fit every bad situation.
11 words 5621 learners

Learn words with Flashcards and other activities

Definition First
Print Flashcards

Other learning activities

Answer a few questions about each word. Use this to prep for your next quiz! Compete with other teams in real time to see who answers the most questions correctly! Test your spelling acumen. Read the definition, listen to the word and try spelling it!

Teaching tools

Create and assign quizzes to your students to test their vocabulary. Assign learning activities including Practice, Vocabulary Jams and Spelling Bees to your students, and monitor their progress in real-time.

Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. apocalypse
    a cosmic cataclysm in which God destroys the powers of evil
    I’d been ready to let the world end, prepared to sit back and wait for the apocalypse. We Are the Ants
    A Greek word meaning "to uncover" or "to reveal," apocalypse was used to describe the revelation St. John had on Patmos. The Book of Revelation, wherein he described his visions, took its name from this, and since he saw the end of the world, apocalypse took that meaning.
  2. calamity
    an event resulting in great loss and misfortune
    Windstorms, lightning fires, landslides, volcanic eruptions, and other natural calamities knock down trees and open up the forest, or prevent open country from turning into forestland. 1491
    Calamus means "straw" or "wheat stalk" in Latin, so if drought or hail destroyed the crops, that was a calamity.
  3. cataclysm
    a sudden violent change in the earth's surface
    Rather than a colossal biblical Flood, Lyell argued, there had been millions of floods; God had shaped the earth not through singular cataclysms but through a million paper cuts. The Gene
    Kataklysmos means "flood" or "deluge" in Greek, and was used to refer to the Biblical flood. As a result, now it means any huge disaster, usually natural but sometimes human-caused.
  4. catastrophe
    a sudden violent change in the earth's surface
    Since the catastrophe that had burst the worlds open, all the Arctic ice had begun to melt, and new and strange currents appeared in the water. The Amber Spyglass
    The cata- prefix in catastrophe is the same as in cataclysm, above: meaning "down" or "against." In this case it's modifying the root strophein, meaning "to turn," as in "overturn" or "flip over." So a disaster that upends a situation, destroying the existing order, is a catastrophe.
  5. crisis
    an unstable situation of extreme danger or difficulty
    On TV, CNN is focused on the continuing crisis of Hurricane Noah. Dry
  6. debacle
    a sudden and complete disaster
    He imagined Trina out there somewhere, being held by the bonfire people, probably even crazier with another day gone and the debacle of the forest fire. The Kill Order (Maze Runner, Book Four; Origin)
    In French, débâcler means "to unbar" or "to unblock," specifically in the sense of breaking ice to clear a waterway. As with other words on this list, the reference to disaster deals with the ensuing flood, when the water rushes through and causes destruction. So if you commit to a course of action and it goes horribly wrong, that's a debacle.
  7. disaster
    an event resulting in great loss and misfortune
    If there was a silver lining, it was that the earthquake brought new funding and world attention to a country that had suffered in obscurity through too many natural, political, and health disasters. Mountains Beyond Mountains
  8. exigency
    a sudden unforeseen crisis that requires immediate action
    But the exigencies of the war have also forced many to leave their animals behind. Los Angeles Times
  9. fiasco
    a complete failure or collapse
    The event probably got more attention as a fiasco than it would have if things had gone smoothly. Votes for Women!
    Fiasco means "flask" or "bottle" in Italian. How it came to mean "a humiliating failure" is unclear. Since the word originally referred to round-bottomed wine bottles with woven grass bases, it's possible that the negative connotation came from the imperfection of the bottles: without a flat base, they couldn't stand up by themselves.
  10. mishap
    an instance of misfortune
    Likewise, insurance policies with broad coverage which compensates for any mishap are apt to be cheaper in the long run than insurance for a particular disease or a particular trip. Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences
    From the same Scandinavian root, hap, meaning "luck," as happen, a mishap is something that goes wrong unexpectedly, a piece of bad luck.
  11. tragedy
    an event resulting in great loss and misfortune
    It must’ve just been a horrible accident, Dallas figured, no one in the wrong, but a tragedy nonetheless. A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age
Created on Thu Nov 07 13:02:24 EST 2019 (updated Thu May 04 14:30:52 EDT 2023)

Sign up now (it’s free!)

Whether you’re a teacher or a learner, Vocabulary.com can put you or your class on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement.