Crossword clues for debacle
debacle
- Utter failure
- Utter disaster
- Complete failure
- Total disaster
- Total flop
- Complete disaster
- Humiliating failure
- Ludicrous failure
- Epic failure
- Absolute shambles
- Utter defeat or failure
- Total meltdown
- Sudden disaster
- Sudden and violent collapse
- Great disaster
- Embarrassing disaster
- Disorganised event
- Disastrous failure
- Complete collapse
- Charlie Sheen's life, generally
- Disaster
- Spectacular failure
- Fiasco or absolute shambles
- Disastrous collapse
- A sudden and violent collapse
- Flooding caused by a tumultuous breakup of ice in a river during the spring or summer
- A sound defeat
- Overwhelming defeat
- Collapse
- Girl joining society left in first-class mess
- Extremely disconsolate graduate, regularly called a failure
- One coming out with lace undone - it's a fiasco
- Fiasco for young socialite with torn lace
- Failure when coating of drive cable broken
- Failure of young socialite star to seal deal finally
- Learner-driver and vehicle flipping over in river - disaster!
- Reverse taxi into printer’s sign? Disaster!
- Disaster when large taxi reverses into river
- The Spanish half-heartedly taxied back to find disaster
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Debacle \De*ba"cle\, n. [F. d['e]b[^a]cle, fr. d['e]b[^a]cler to unbar, break loose; pref. d['e]- (prob. = L. dis) + b[^a]cler to bolt, fr. L. baculum a stick.]
(Geol.) A breaking or bursting forth; a violent rush or flood of waters which breaks down opposing barriers, and hurls forward and disperses blocks of stone and other d['e]bris.
A sudden breaking up or breaking loose; a violent dispersion or disruption; impetuous rush; outburst.
a complete and ludicrous failure; a rout, as of an army; a great disaster; a fiasco.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"disaster," 1848, from French débâcle "downfall, collapse, disaster" (17c.), a figurative use, literally "breaking up (of ice on a river)," extended to the violent flood that follows when the river ice melts in spring; from débâcler "to free," from Middle French desbacler "to unbar," from des- "off" + bacler "to bar," from Vulgar Latin *bacculare, from Latin baculum "stick" (see bacillus). Sense of "disaster" was present in French before English borrowed the word.
Wiktionary
n. 1 An event or enterprise that ends suddenly and disastrously, often with humiliating consequences. 2 (context ecology English) A breaking up of a natural dam, usually made of ice, by a river and the ensuing rush of water.
WordNet
Wikipedia
A débâcle is an event that turns out as a disaster. It is also the name of:
- Debacle: The First Decade, an album by the Violent Femmes
- La Débâcle, a novel by Émile Zola
- Debacle, a 2009 Nike SB skateboarding video
Usage examples of "debacle".
Sometimes we are fused with Cervantes, but more often we are invisible wanderers who accompany the sublime pair in their adventures and debacles.
However, the Special Republican Guard, the Republican Guard, and a handful of regular army divisions remained both loyal and cohesive enough after the debacle of Desert Storm to suppress both of the revolts.
Soseki Koi and a small group of survivors had fought their way clear of the Mitzi Harlan debacle.
Anto Rayl says their investigators have found that those ships were two which had been for repairs at the time of the general debacle.
He remembered her laughing when he told her about the Leaky Cauldron debacle.
Arthur Andersen, the once-revered accounting firm, evaporated overnight as its role in the debacle led to a subsidiary scandal of its own.
The Mineral Exploiters had destroyed each other in a horribly embarrassing debacle.
Royal Horticultural Society would flap their mouths like mynah birds, repeating every titillating detail of the debacle to anyone who cared to listen.
All in all, it had been quite a debacle, but it had also been a maturing experience.
None mentioned the Mexican debacle, Playa Enterprises, or the Playa del Sol Company, Ltd.
And in the case of the Larners, the association would be even more hazardous - they were outright hustlers tainted by the Playa del Sol debacle.
After the debacle of the attempted storming of Silo Nine and the purges that followed, what remained of the underground lived from moment to moment, and tended to be even more paranoid than it used to.
He knew he was responsible for the debacle, but to hear it put into words by another military man, his superior officer now but more than that, a renowned fighter like Aguinaldo, brought the terrible load of his failure home.
Martian debacle, built and hurled at the nearest of the habitable worlds indicated on the Martian astrogation charts with the bravado of a Molotov cocktail hurled at a tank.
A day after the last debacle, Baptiste had another meeting planned with Benoit Moreau that he hoped would go better than the prior.