fiasco
Americannoun
-
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
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.
They are a group so tightly bound together that this latest fiasco could bring the whole house down.
From BBC • Jun. 9, 2026
Mr. Blair’s not-entirely-original diagnosis of this fiasco is that Mr. Starmer’s Labour never had a plan.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 28, 2026
The launch of plans for government-issued digital ID for all British adults last year has been labelled "nothing short of a fiasco" by the home affairs select committee.
From BBC • May 20, 2026
The 2019 screen fiasco, which found countless ways to humiliate a cast that included Taylor Swift and Judi Dench, gave kitsch a bad name.
From Los Angeles Times • May 1, 2026
I knew I had to end this fiasco of a conversation.
From "Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie" by Jordan Sonnenblick
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.
