An apocalypse is the violent end of the world. A nuclear apocalypse, the coming apocalypse, apocalypse films.
The Greek means an uncovering rather than a destruction, since the Book of Revelation is a revealing and the disasters in it came to stand for the word. The modern sense is now so fixed that the original is almost lost.
1nounapocalypseThe violent end of the world.
“The film shows a world after the apocalypse, with empty cities and no electricity.”
apocalypse is an ending.
Greek apokalypsis means an uncovering or revelation, from apo plus kalyptein, to cover.
Proto-Indo-European
*ḱel- (cover)
Middle English
apocalips
English, today
apocalypse
Built from
From Middle English apocalips. From Middle English apocalips, from Latin apocalypsis, from Ancient Greek ἀποκάλυψις (“revelation”) literally “uncovering”, from ἀποκαλύπτω (“to reveal”), from ἀπό (“back, away from”) + καλύπτω (“to cover”), + -σις. The sense evolution to "catastrophe, end of the world" stems from the depiction of such events in the biblical Book of Revelation, also called the Apocalypse of (i.e. Revelation to) John. The verb is from the noun and, in sense 1, a semantic loan from the etymonic Ancient Greek - verb ἀποκαλύπτω (“to reveal”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA