disaster

1. 1.

   a state of extreme (usually irremediable) ruin and misfortune

   “lack of funds has resulted in a catastrophe for our school system”

   “his policies were a disaster”

   Synonymscatastrophe

   Broaderadversity
2. 2.

   an event resulting in great loss and misfortune

   “the whole city was affected by the irremediable calamity”

   “the earthquake was a disaster”

   Synonymscalamitycatastrophetragedycataclysm

   Broadermisfortune

   Narroweract of Godapocalypsefaminekiss of deathmeltdownplaguevisitationtidal wavetsunami
3. 3.

   an act that has disastrous consequences

   Broaderdestruction

Other forms of disaster

plural

disasters·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about disaster

What does disaster mean?

disaster means "a state of extreme (usually irremediable) ruin and misfortune". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in disaster?

disaster has 3 syllables: di-sas-ter. The stress falls on "sas". In IPA it is /dɪˈzæstɚ/.

What is another word for disaster?

Close synonyms include catastrophe, calamity, catastrophe, tragedy, cataclysm. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is disaster a common word?

disaster is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.