Disastrous

How to spell disastrous

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce disastrous

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does disastrous mean?

1. adjectiveCausing great damage, harm, or failure; catastrophic.

Disastrous in a sentence

• The merger turned out to be a disastrous decision for both firms.

• Heavy rain made the harvest disastrous that year.

Where does disastrous come from?

Language of origin: Italian

This adjective traces back to an old astrological idea: that catastrophe was caused by an unfavourable or ill-positioned star. It comes from the Italian disastro, built from dis- meaning 'bad' or 'ill' and astro meaning 'star', so the literal sense was 'ill-starred' or born under a bad star. English took the related adjective in the late sixteenth century, partly through the French desastreux, to describe events that turn out catastrophically. The 'astr' element is the same Greek and Latin root for star that gives us 'astronomy', 'astronaut' and 'asterisk'. The classic spelling trap is that the noun 'disaster' has an audible 'er', so writers add a phantom 'e' and produce 'disasterous'; remembering the star root 'astr' (no extra e) keeps the adjective on track.

How the word is built

• dis- (Latin: bad, ill)
• astr (Greek/Latin astrum: star)
• -ous (full of, adjective suffix)