tragedy
Pluraltragedies
- 1A disastrous event, especially one that causes great loss of life or serious injury.
The earthquake was a tragedy that claimed thousands of lives.
Investigators worked to understand how such a tragedy could have been prevented.
Similardisaster, catastrophe, calamity, misfortune
Note
The stage word carried over into ordinary speech for real disaster, such as floods, fires and sudden deaths. It pairs with the language of loss: a tragedy takes or claims lives, and terrible is its favorite intensifier. Mystery writers lean on it too. Baroness Orczy's "The Tragedy in Dartmoor Terrace" uses it for a puzzling crime, borrowing the gravity of the theatrical genre.
- 2A drama in which the main character is brought to ruin or suffers extreme consequences because of a tragic flaw or weakness of character.
Shakespeare's Othello is a tragedy driven by jealousy and misplaced trust.
The novel reads like a classic tragedy, with the protagonist's ambition leading to his downfall.
Oppositecomedy
Note
Behind the word is an odd Greek compound: tragōidía, from trágos "male goat" and ōidḗ "song", perhaps recalling the goat-satyrs of Dorian theater. It reached English through Latin and Old French. In this sense it is countable and names a single work, as in a tragedy or Shakespeare's tragedies. Its natural opposite is comedy, the play that bends toward good fortune rather than ruin.
- 3The genre of plays and works in which the main character comes to ruin, together with the art of producing them.
Greek tragedy reached its height in the works of Sophocles and Euripides.
She devoted her career to writing tragedy for the modern stage.
Oppositecomedy
Note
Here the word names the form itself, and it usually drops the article: playwrights write tragedy, students read Greek tragedy, critics weigh tragedy against comedy. Add an article and it slips back into a single play. The two genres are defined against each other, one moving toward ruin and the other away from it, so the pairing with comedy comes naturally in this sense.
Practice
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Origin
It comes through Middle English, Old French, and Latin from the Ancient Greek τραγῳδία (tragōidía, "tragedy"), made from τράγος (trágos, "male goat") plus ᾠδή (ōidḗ, "song"). This may refer to the goat-satyrs of Dorian theater, or, per Beekes, possibly to a goat given as a prize, but the origin remains uncertain.