disastrous

[dih-zas-truhs, -zah-struhs]

adjective

1. causing great distress or injury; ruinous; very unfortunate; calamitous.

   The rain and cold proved disastrous to his health.

2. Archaic.,  foreboding disaster.

Other Word Forms

• disastrously adverb
• disastrousness noun
• nondisastrous adjective
• nondisastrously adverb
• nondisastrousness noun
• predisastrous adjective
• predisastrously adverb
• quasi-disastrous adjective
• quasi-disastrously adverb
• undisastrous adjective
• undisastrously adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of disastrous¹

1580–90; < Middle French desastreux, Italian disastroso. See disaster, -ous

Example Sentences

The British historian Arnold Toynbee saw the Industrial Revolution as “a period as disastrous and terrible as any through which a nation ever passed.”

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

It took two quarters for Tim Cook to save Apple from what was almost a disastrous year.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Wolves did not want to make a change, and even leading into the weekend the club's hierarchy was still backing Pereira, but that changed after a disastrous afternoon in west London.

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The Guardian called it "some way short of a total catastrophe", while The Daily Telegraph called it "disastrous".

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Or, as Doc Brown might have yelped, changes could have disastrous consequences.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Related Words

• adverse 
• calamitous 
• cataclysmic 
• catastrophic 
• destructive 
• dire 
• dreadful 
• fatal 
• fateful 
• harmful 
• ill-fated 
• ruinous 
• terrible 
• tragic 
• unfavorable 
• unfortunate