catastrophic

UK/kætəˈstɹɒfɪk/US/ˌkætəˈstɹɑfɪk/

adjectiveB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,470 of 15,258neutral

Catastrophic means bringing sudden and very great damage. Catastrophic failure, catastrophic flooding, catastrophically wrong.

In engineering catastrophic failure is a technical term: the whole thing fails at once rather than degrading, which is why aircraft are designed to fail gradually. The Greek behind it means an overturning, and it named the turn at the end of a tragedy.

Definitions of catastrophic

1adjectivecatastrophicBringing sudden and very great damage.B2+
“The earthquake had catastrophic effects, destroying whole towns in seconds.”

catastrophic is a quality.

Where it comes from

Greek katastrophe means an overturning — kata, down, plus strephein, to turn.

Ancient Greek
καταστροφικός
English, today
catastrophic

Ancient Greek καταστροφικός. by surface analysis, catastrophe + -ic.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

catastrophic in the wild

A catastrophic failure is a sudden and total failure from which recovery is impossible.
Catastrophic failure
In chemical engineering, a reaction which undergoes thermal runaway can cause catastrophic failure.
Catastrophic failure
A catastrophic kill, K-Kill or complete kill is damage inflicted on an armored vehicle that renders it permanently non-functional (most commonly via fire and/or an explosion).
Catastrophic kill
Some tank designs employ blow-off panels, channeling such explosions outside of the vehicle, turning an otherwise catastrophic kill into a firepower kill.
Catastrophic kill
A catastrophic injury is a severe injury to the spine, spinal cord, or brain.
Catastrophic injury

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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