fiasco
Americannoun
-
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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This Week in Pop Culture: February 16 - 22, 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.
See Examples For:
We were so excited to assign blame for the Platner fiasco in the first few entries that we forgot to offer anything forward-looking.
From Slate ● Jul. 11, 2026
Same-store sales had been growing steadily in the buildup to Cracker Barrel’s logo fiasco before plummeting 8.5% in the quarter ended last October and 7.9% in the January quarter.
From Barron's ● Jun. 10, 2026
Artan's plight is the latest fiasco to hit the World Cup, with Iran's football federation stating on Tuesday that their allocation of fan tickets for the group stage has been revoked.
From BBC ● Jun. 9, 2026
Mr. Blair’s not-entirely-original diagnosis of this fiasco is that Mr. Starmer’s Labour never had a plan.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 28, 2026
Back home, a national debate was raging over H-bomb testing, provoked by the fallout fiasco of the Bravo tests.
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
Despite the litany of fiascoes over the last few years, probation leaders still argued in court filings that Bonta had gone too far.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 10, 2025
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
The good news is the state report makes multiple recommendations that, if followed, should help Florida’s universities avoid future accounting fiascoes, while strengthening boards of trustees and the Board of Governors, which oversees universities.
From Washington Times ● Mar. 13, 2019
What happened next changed history and resulted in one of America's most tragic medical fiascoes.
From "Ambushed!" by Gail Jarrow
If the fiascos Jobs encountered were largely of his own making, the successes often had to do with luck.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 17, 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
Hudson’s detractors point to the public-relations fiascos the group suffered under her watch, from #OscarsSoWhite to the “Moonlight”/“La La Land” envelope snafu to the Will Smith Slap.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 20, 2022
The toughness of Eyob Faniel of Italy, who placed third in the men’s race after enduring 56 hours of travel — and various travel fiascos — from his training base in Kenya last week.
From New York Times ● Nov. 7, 2021
The Dynamiter was suggested by certain attempted outrages in London which had all turned out to be fiascos.
From The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson by Sanchez, Nellie Van de Grift
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.
