catastrophic
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
causing a lot of damage or suffering, often very suddenly.
involving or causing sudden great damage or suffering; often used in environmental, economic, or personal contexts.
Simple“The heavy rains caused a catastrophic flood that destroyed many homes.”
In context“The sudden collapse of the dam led to catastrophic flooding in the valley, displacing thousands of residents within a matter of hours.”
UsageOften used to modify nouns like 'failure', 'loss', or 'consequences'.
SynonymsAntonyms - 02 C1 Advanced
describing a complete and terrible failure from which it is hard to recover.
denoting a failure that is total and typically irreversible; frequently applied to mechanical or systemic breakdowns.
Simple“The rocket suffered a catastrophic engine failure shortly after it launched.”
In context“The IT department warned that a catastrophic server failure would result in the permanent loss of all unencrypted customer data.”
UsageCommon in engineering and computing to describe a system that stops working entirely.
Teacher's tipIn technical contexts, this implies the system cannot be repaired or resumed without a total reset.
Synonyms
“The last six years have seen several catastrophic fires in the West and Canada, Boudreaux said.”
“Wild tigers have suffered a catastrophic century, with numbers falling from about 100,000 at the beginning of the 20th century to about 5,500 today.”
Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek καταστροφικός (katastrophikós). By surface analysis, catastrophe + -ic.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.