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

Thankfully, Hegseth’s vision is not shared by many of the veterans of America’s disastrous post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

From Salon

All of this dates back to Macron's disastrous dissolution of the National Assembly in the early summer of 2024.

From BBC

The CIA previously suffered a disastrous loss of its agents in China after their connections to the dark web were breached by Beijing's Ministry of State Security.

From BBC

But in the wake of the disastrous flooding, those videos have resurfaced as subjects of anger.

From BBC

He points to the exact spot, a few hundred metres away on the mountain opposite, where lightning struck a few weeks earlier, igniting a wildfire that had disastrous consequences.

From BBC

Related Words

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