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
Investors warn the fiasco will hurt Turkey’s credibility.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026
He described the fiasco surrounding the proposal as "a sad and reproachable series of events".
From Barron's ● Aug. 5, 2026
She might be able to turn this little fiasco into a profit.
From "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
More often it’s how mistakes turn into fiascoes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026
When it comes to recent Wall Street fiascoes, it’s hard to beat AT&T’s adventure with Time Warner.
From Washington Post ● May 21, 2021
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
Lawmakers repeatedly asked what went wrong in the Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank fiascos.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 2, 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
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 Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
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.
