cataclysm
Americannoun
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any violent upheaval, especially one of a social or political nature.
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Physical Geography. a sudden and violent physical action producing changes in the earth's surface.
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an extensive flood; deluge.
noun
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a violent upheaval, esp of a political, military, or social nature
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a disastrous flood; deluge
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geology another name for catastrophe
Related Words
See disaster.
Other Word Forms
- cataclysmic adjective
- cataclysmically adverb
Etymology
Origin of cataclysm
1625–35; < Late Latin cataclysmos (Vulgate) < Greek kataklysmós flood (akin to kataklýzein to flood), equivalent to kata- cata- + klysmós a washing
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.
If Blackstone and other lenders recover all or most of their financing, it would buttress their case that investors have overreacted to software cataclysm concerns.
From Barron's • Mar. 27, 2026
The frantic warnings of a Cosmic Weatherman go unheard as winter, confoundingly, follows spring, and summer arrives as a double cataclysm of fire and floods.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 22, 2025
We, on the other hand, will be long gone by then, shriveled by some far more minor cataclysm like the fragile little primates we are.
From Salon • Feb. 25, 2025
This paves the way for centuries of unimaginable planetary cataclysm.
From Slate • Jan. 13, 2025
As an example of the cataclysm that would result from Webster’s untuning of the string, Macdonald worried that the dictionaries of 1988 would list without comment the solecisms mischievious, inviduous, and nuclear pronounced as “nucular.”
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
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.
