Calamity

How to spell calamity

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce calamity

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does calamity mean?

1. nounA serious event causing great damage, distress, or misfortune.

Calamity in a sentence

• The flood was a calamity for every business along the riverbank.

• Losing the entire archive in the fire felt like a personal calamity.

Where does calamity come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin calamitas, which meant damage, ruin, or a great misfortune, especially the kind that brought widespread loss. Roman writers used it for military defeats and natural disasters alike, and one old explanation linked it to calamus, meaning a stalk of corn or reed, since a flattened crop spelled disaster for a farming community. English took the word in the fifteenth century by way of the Old French calamite, keeping the sense of a grievous, often public misfortune. The single l and single m in the spelling trace straight back to the Latin calamitas, so resisting the urge to double either letter is the key trap. The related adjective calamitous, meaning disastrous, preserves the same root and the same single consonants.

How the word is built

• calamit- (from Latin calamitas: disaster, loss)
• -y (noun suffix)