disastrous
- 1Marked by great damage, ruin, or suffering; calamitous.
The company's decision to expand quickly proved disastrous, wiping out years of profit.
A single disastrous harvest left the whole region facing famine.
Similarcatastrophic, cataclysmic
Oppositesuccessful, beneficial, fortunate
Note
Built in English from disaster and -ous, but on the model of Middle French desastreux, the modern désastreux. It applies as readily to choices as to events: a policy, a position or a decision can be disastrous, not only a flood or a failed harvest. Its comparative is formed with more and most, so the forms are more disastrous and most disastrous, never disastrouser.
- 2Seeming to warn of or foretell a coming disaster; ill-omened.
Ancient writers often read eclipses as disastrous portents of a ruler's fall.
The general dismissed the priest's disastrous prophecies and marched at dawn.
Similarominous, sinister, dire, foreboding, inauspicious
Oppositeauspicious, fortunate
Note
Here the word points forward rather than at damage done. The thing described does no harm itself but signals that harm is coming. In E. R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros (1922), a raging lord's eyes "blazed like disastrous stars at midnight." To tell it from the "calamitous" meaning, ask whether the noun causes ruin or foretells it. Ominous, baleful and inauspicious keep company with this sense.
Use it in a sentence
Write your own sentence with disastrous, and AI will tell you whether it fits and which meaning you used.
Origin
Formed from 'disaster' plus the suffix '-ous', following Middle French 'desastreux' and Italian 'disastroso'. The root 'disaster' combines 'dis-' ('away, without', from Latin) with 'astro' ('star', from Latin 'astrum' and ultimately Ancient Greek 'astron').