Crossword clues for catastrophe
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Catastrophe \Ca*tas"tro*phe\, n. [L. catastropha, Gr. ?, fr. ? to turn up and down, to overturn; kata` down + ? to turn.]
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An event producing a subversion of the order or system of things; a final event, usually of a calamitous or disastrous nature; hence, sudden calamity; great misfortune.
The strange catastrophe of affairs now at London.
--Bp. Burnet.The most horrible and portentous catastrophe that nature ever yet saw.
--Woodward. The final event in a romance or a dramatic piece; a denouement, as a death in a tragedy, or a marriage in a comedy.
(Geol.) A violent and widely extended change in the surface of the earth, as, an elevation or subsidence of some part of it, effected by internal causes.
--Whewell.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1530s, "reversal of what is expected" (especially a fatal turning point in a drama), from Latin catastropha, from Greek katastrophe "an overturning; a sudden end," from katastrephein "to overturn, turn down, trample on; to come to an end," from kata "down" (see cata-) + strephein "turn" (see strophe). Extension to "sudden disaster" is first recorded 1748.
Wiktionary
n. 1 Any large and disastrous event of great significance. 2 (context insurance English) A disaster beyond expectations 3 (context narratology English) The dramatic event that initiates the resolution of the plot in a tragedy. 4 (context mathematics English) A type of bifurcation, where a system shifts between two stable states.
n. (context now rare English) (alternative spelling of catastrophe English)
WordNet
n. an event resulting in great loss and misfortune; "the whole city was affected by the irremediable calamity"; "the earthquake was a disaster" [syn: calamity, disaster, tragedy, cataclysm]
a state of extreme (usually irremediable) ruin and misfortune; "lack of funds has resulted in a catastrophe for our school system"; "his policies were a disaster" [syn: disaster]
a sudden violent change in the earth's surface [syn: cataclysm]
Wikipedia
Catastrophe is a short play by Samuel Beckett, written in French in 1982 at the invitation of A.I.D.A. (Association Internationale de Défense des Artistes) and “[f]irst produced in the Avignon Festival (21 July 1982) … Beckett considered it ‘massacred.’” It is one of his few plays to deal with a political theme and, arguably, holds the title of Beckett's most optimistic work. It was dedicated to then imprisoned Czech reformer and playwright, Václav Havel.
Catastrophe or catastrophic comes from the Greek κατά (kata) = down; στροφή (strophē) = turning. It may refer to:
In drama, particularly the tragedies of classical antiquity, the catastrophe is the final resolution in a poem or narrative plot, which unravels the intrigue and brings the piece to a close. In comedies, this may be a marriage between main characters; in tragedies, it may be the death of one or more main characters. It is the final part of a play, following the protasis, epitasis, and catastasis.
The catastrophe is either simple or complex, for which also the fable and action are denominated. In a simple catastrophe, there is no change in the state of the main characters, nor any discovery or unravelling; the plot being only a mere passage out of agitation, to quiet and repose. This catastrophe is rather accommodated to the nature of the epic poem, than of the tragedy.
In a complex catastrophe, the main character undergoes a change of fortune, sometimes by means of a discovery, and sometimes without. The qualifications of this change are that it be probable and necessary: in order to be probable, it must be the natural result or effect of the foregoing actions, i.e. it must spring from the subject itself, or take its rise from the incidents, and not be introduced merely to serve a turn.
The discovery in a complex catastrophe must have the same qualifications as the catastrophe itself, of which it is a principal part: it must be both probable and necessary. To be probable, it must spring out of the subject itself; not effected by means of marks or tokens, rings, bracelets, or by a mere recollection, as is frequently done both in ancient and modern times. To be necessary, it must never leave the characters it concerns in the same sentiments they had before, but still produce either love or hatred, etc. Sometimes, the change consists in the discovery, sometimes it follows at a distance, and sometimes results immediately from it; the last was used, for example, in Oedipus Rex.
Among critics, it has long been debated whether the catastrophe should always end happily, and favorably on the side of virtue, or not; i.e. whether virtue is always to be rewarded, and vice punished, in the catastrophe. Aristotle, for example, preferred a shocking catastrophe, rather than a happy one; in that regard, the moving of terror and pity, which is the aim of tragedy, is better effected by the former than the latter.
René Le Bossu, a 17th-century French critic, divides the catastrophe, at least with regards to epics, into the unravelling, or denouement, and the finishing, or achievement; the latter of which he makes the result of the former, and to consist in the hero's passage out of a state of trouble and agitation, to rest and quiet. This period is but a point, without extent or duration; in which it differs from the former, which comprehends everything after the plot is laid. He adds, that there are several unravellings in a piece, each interconnected. The finishing is the end of the last unravelling.
In the twentieth century, J.R.R. Tolkien distinguished between what he called the catastrophe and the eucatastrophe. The eucatastrophe is a classical catastrophe with an unexpected positive outcome for the protagonist. This term was coined to distance itself from the vernacular use of the word 'catastrophe' to signify disaster (which gave the term negative connotations in everyday usage).
Catastrophe is a 2009 book co-written by American political commentator Dick Morris and his wife Eileen McGann, which spells out hypothetical catastrophic consequences of the Barack Obama administration policies and shows how the Obama administration could be stopped.
Catastrophe is a five-part British documentary television series telling the story of the catastrophic events that shaped planet Earth. It is presented by Tony Robinson and was first aired on Channel 4 on 24 November 2008. The series producer was Stephen Marsh with researcher Dr Rhodri Jones.
Catastrophe is a British sitcom first broadcast on 19 January 2015 on Channel 4. It stars Sharon Horgan as Sharon Morris and Rob Delaney as Rob Norris, who get together after she falls pregnant following a brief affair while he is in the UK on business. Carrie Fisher, Ashley Jensen, and Mark Bonnar play supporting characters in the series. The show was renewed for a second series in January 2015 and began broadcasting from 27 October 2015, having been brought forward from its original schedule of early 2016. In July 2016, it was announced Catastrophe was renewed for a third and fourth series. The third series, scheduled for 2017, will be 6 episodes long.
For her performance in the show, Sharon Horgan was nominated for a 2016 British Academy Television Awards for Best Female Comedy Performance in 2016. Both Horgan and Delaney won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Writer: Comedy. The show was nominated for a Peabody Award. In July 2016, the show was honoured with a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Writing For a Comedy Series, going to Horgan and Delaney.
Usage examples of "catastrophe".
While Makerakera the expert on aggression sweated frantically to weld together a scratch team of whoever could be spared to join him - Choong from Hong Kong, Jenny Fender from Indiana, Stanislaus Danquah from Accra, and some trainees - the little Greek Pericles Phranakis turned his back on the catastrophe and went away down a path of his own, to a land where success had crowned his efforts with a wreath of bay.
Determined to avoid war, Jefferson called for an embargo on all American shipping, which John Adams, like most New Englanders, saw as a catastrophe for New England, if not the nation.
And the stopover in Port Chuma, capital of Gondwanaland, former European colony of Bamba del Oro, and now sovereign nation on the brink of social and economic catastrophe, was interminable.
According to this portrayal, those were times of animality and barbaric, uncontrolled procreation, of catastrophe both economic and military, and the undeniable achievements of past civilization were presented as an expression of the strength and determination that permitted people to overcome the benightedness and the cruelty of the period: those achievements, then, came about as it were in spite of the prevailing tendency to live at the cost of others.
Its innocently white face, wreathed with snowy cirri and showing no trace of the ice ring or the catastrophe, gently swam through the void, pushing the blackness and the pale dust of the stars out of the frame of the screen.
Tied from his belt to the crossarm, it held him suspended fifty-seven feet above the ground, in a perfect position to watch his mission end in catastrophe.
As I advanced along the bank opposed to them, I was further amazed to hear them discoursing quite equably together, so that it was impossible to say on the face of it whether a catastrophe had occurred, or the great heat of a cloudless summer day had tempted an eccentric couple to seek for coolness in the directest fashion, without absolute disregard to propriety.
Less than two years after the Unzen catastrophe another group of volcano watchers, led by Stanley Williams of the University of Arizona, descended into the rim of an active volcano called Galeras in Colombia.
Stellar explosions are interesting and sites of great opportunity because they are the original source of all exotic minerals, but opening gates to their vicinity is hazardous because Ty believes the time-mobile races often precipitate such catastrophes for their own purposes.
But it might be argued that had more non-Nazi Germans read it before 1933 and had the foreign statesmen of the world perused it carefully while there still was time, both Germany and the world might have been saved from catastrophe.
The last shreds of the glamourie that Dame Alecto and the Dowager Duchess of Wessex had set upon her when they brought her to this alien England was lifted by catastrophe, and Sarah realized at last who she was.
He tried to create an ecological catastrophe by dumping Kuwaiti oil into the Persian Gulf.
The Quadi and the Marcomanni, who had taken the lead in the war, were the most severely punished in its catastrophe.
What happens if the metagalactic center is empty when the catastrophe arrives?
Tobacconist against which newsboards leaned and told of a dreadful catastrophe in New York.