calamitous
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of calamitous
First recorded in 1535–45; calamit(y) + -ous
Explanation
A calamitous event is one that leads to a catastrophe — like the calamitous crashing of your parents' car into the garage door. Calamitous is an adjective that is generally used to describe events, and these events are disastrous or destructive. A failed election can be a calamitous event for a politician, especially if he loses by a landslide. Ever heard of Calamity Jane? She was known for her wild, calamitous behavior in the Wild West during the 19th century. Steer clear of anyone with a name like Calamity.
Vocabulary lists containing calamitous
"The Odyssey" by Homer, Books 8–13
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
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President Trump's Second State of the Union Address (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.
Ari Roth’s new play, “My Calamitous Affair With the Minister of Culture and Censorship or Death of the Dialogic in the American Theater,” imagines thespians rehearsing a script that has 58 footnotes.
From Washington Post • Oct. 13, 2022
Historian Barbara Tuchman, in "A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century," writes that Christianity provided "the matrix and law of medieval life, omnipresent, indeed compulsory."
From Salon • Aug. 28, 2022
For the ultimate in medieval scuttlebutt, however, you can’t do better than Barbara Tuchman’s prizewinning 1978 history, “A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century.”
From Salon • Jun. 4, 2012
In the year 1769 appeared his "Caution and Warning to Great Britain and her Colonies on the Calamitous State of the Enslaved Negroes in the British Dominions."
From The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 by Various
Calamitous to relate, it also disfigures the margin of our Revised Version of S. Mark vi.
From The Revision Revised by Burgon, John William
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.
