catastrophically

adverbC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,968 of 15,258neutral

Catastrophically means to a disastrous degree. Catastrophically wrong.

It goes with words like wrong and failed rather than with anything measurable. To fail catastrophically in engineering means all at once rather than gradually, which is a technical distinction.

Definitions of catastrophically

1adverbcatastrophicallyTo a disastrous degree.C2
“The whole estimate was catastrophically low.”

catastrophically is a manner.

Where it comes from

Ancient Greek
καταστροφικός
English
catastrophic
English, today
catastrophically

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

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

catastrophically in the wild

The star catastrophically collapses and may explode in what is known as a Type II supernova.
Silicon-burning process
The abort of the flight allowed for the rescue of the crew if the rocket failed catastrophically.
Apollo abort modes
On May 16, 1874, several months after Hayden's death, the dam failed catastrophically, causing a flood that killed 139 people and destroyed all four of Hayden's factories.
Joel Hayden
While some believe that these lava dams were stable, lasting up to 20,000 years and forming large reservoirs, others think they failed quickly and catastrophically as massive floods.
Uinkaret volcanic field
In the Hurricane Bawbag storms of December 2011, one of the turbines of the wind farm catastrophically failed in a ball of fire.
Ardrossan Wind Farm

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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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