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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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:
The not-so-Super Rams return to the scene of that fiasco on Sunday.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 3, 2026
Every failure is fuel for the next fiasco.
From Salon ● Oct. 2, 2026
For some of those companies, the Strait of Hormuz fiasco has been a stock boost.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 1, 2026
Workers at Starbucks Korea have formed a labour union, the company confirmed on Sunday, following a marketing fiasco that evoked painful memories of a 1980 government crackdown on pro-democracy activists.
From Barron's ● Jul. 19, 2026
The first trial, of a Los Alamos device code-named Bravo, was a fiasco, though one that brought a sort of perverse credit to the Los Alamos lab.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
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
Those fiascoes were overtaken in the public eye by Alarcon’s worker-turned-enemy, L.A.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 4, 2023
From failed gender reveal to photo-shoot flops, read on for nine of the funniest parenting fiascoes that made headlines this year.
From Fox News ● Dec. 29, 2019
Oakland was too understanding during the fiascoes with his frostbitten feet and helmet grievances.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 21, 2019
What happened next changed history and resulted in one of America's most tragic medical fiascoes.
From "Ambushed!" by Gail Jarrow
Final second fiascos for Washington and Philadelphia lead to maddening finishes—and a crush of second-guessing.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 15, 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
Musk also hasn’t internalized the lesson taught by such marketing fiascos as the introduction of new Coke in 1985, which the Coca-Cola Co. itself labels “one of the most memorable marketing blunders ever.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 7, 2022
Realizing from the two lamentable fiascos just recounted that little could be accomplished by private initiative, the upholders of the law turned their attention to Sacramento.
From The Gray Dawn by Stewart Edward White
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
