fiasco
Americannoun
-
fiascos,
plural
-
fiascoes
plural
-
a complete and ignominious failure.
- Synonyms:
- bomb, flop, debacle, catastrophe, disaster
-
a round-bottomed glass flask for wine, especially Chianti, fitted with a woven, protective raffia basket that also enables the bottle to stand upright.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of fiasco
1850–55; < Italian: literally, bottle < Germanic ( see flask 1); sense “failure” from Italian phrase far fiasco to fail, literally, to make a bottle, idiom of uncertain origin
Explanation
A fiasco is a disaster. It's not a natural disaster — like an earthquake or a volcano; a fiasco is usually the result of human failure. Fiasco comes from the Italian term that means "to make a bottle." How it came to describe an utter, embarrassing, disaster in the English language is still unknown. Today, you'll hear fiasco used in situations that have gone so horribly awry that they are almost laughable, like the Thanksgiving dinner fiasco in which the turkey burnt to a crisp, the dog ate all the side dishes, and everyone had to eat frozen pizza instead.
Vocabulary lists containing fiasco
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This Week in Pop Culture: February 16 - 22, 2019
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
While the women were still reeling from the voice-to-text fiasco, another drama was about to unfold.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 15, 2026
For some of those companies, the Strait of Hormuz fiasco has been a stock boost.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 1, 2026
We were so excited to assign blame for the Platner fiasco in the first few entries that we forgot to offer anything forward-looking.
From Slate ● Jul. 11, 2026
Similarly, the Sunday Mirror leads with "Kicking off", and pairs a photograph of England footballer Harry Kane with the caption "World Cup fiasco".
From BBC ● Jul. 4, 2026
He had mentioned nothing of his nocturnal fiasco to Heqet or the Ancient, and now he was glad, very glad.
From "The Golden Goblet" by Eloise Jarvis McGraw
The fiascoes pile up during his full-tilt quest to achieve his dream of being a world champion.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 26, 2025
One can only hope that these are growing pains, that as with early dubbing fiascoes, the streaming services will realize that writing and editing around commercials is an art form in itself.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 4, 2025
The Raider has, by all reports, been a well-managed program, at least compared with other Air Force procurement fiascoes.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 17, 2022
To celebrate such mistakes, mishaps and melees, read on for 10 of the funniest parenting fiascoes that made headlines this year.
From Fox News ● Dec. 30, 2020
What happened next changed history and resulted in one of America's most tragic medical fiascoes.
From "Ambushed!" by Gail Jarrow
If the fiascos Jobs encountered were largely of his own making, the successes often had to do with luck.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 17, 2026
Live Nation, the group behind Ticketmaster and countless controversies surrounding ticket fiascos, is facing a Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit later this week.
From Salon ● May 23, 2024
I’d rather cheer for a kooky blockbuster that’s all fiascos, like the midpoint Monty Python-esque sequence where the crew botches the resurrection and interrogation of craggy old corpses.
From New York Times ● Mar. 30, 2023
Hudson’s detractors point to the public-relations fiascos the group suffered under her watch, from #OscarsSoWhite to the “Moonlight”/“La La Land” envelope snafu to the Will Smith Slap.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 20, 2022
That year—the first of the War—is known as a succession of fiascos for the Americans.
From An Account of the Battle of Chateauguay Being a Lecture Delivered at Ormstown, March 8th, 1889 by W. D. (William Douw) Lighthall
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
