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What is "disastrous"

Crossword clues for disastrous

disastrous
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
disastrous
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a bad/poor/disastrous start
▪ Things got off to a bad start when two people turned up late.
a disastrous defeat (=very big, and with a very bad result)
▪ The party suffered a disastrous defeat in the 2006 election.
disastrous (=a very bad effect)
▪ His leg injury had a disastrous impact on his career as a footballer.
disastrous/dire consequences (=very bad and damaging)
▪ If temperatures continue to rise, it could have disastrous consequences for agriculture.
disastrous/spectacular etc flop
▪ The film was a complete flop.
with disastrous results
▪ The parachute failed to open properly, with disastrous results.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
as
▪ And his love-life's almost as disastrous as yours.
▪ If something ever happened it would probably turn out to be as disastrous as the Quebec Bridge, you know, so.
▪ Wars are almost as disastrous for wildlife as they are for humans.
most
▪ I975 had been one of the most disastrous ever at Lotus.
▪ Behind it lay a tumultuous precedent-one of the most disastrous incidents to beset the face of the earth.
▪ Our most disastrous Rannoch cottage was little better than a derelict shack, owned by an hotel in Aberfeldy.
▪ The earliest and most disastrous of these emulations took place in the isolated village of Bognor.
▪ It is time to shut nuclear power down, and begin the task of decommissioning Britain's most disastrous experiment.
potentially
▪ The implications of such a view were potentially disastrous for positivist criminology.
▪ An investigation of the causes of the charring, a potentially disastrous situation, is under way.
▪ Better that negotiations should break down than such difficulties be suppressed: a merger which fails is potentially disastrous.
▪ Colds, flu or any ailment that diminishes vocal stamina and luster are potentially disastrous.
▪ It is important that the profession makes the public aware that the effect of increasing understaffing is potentially disastrous.
▪ The silly boy might have made potentially disastrous mistakes, but he had preserved the basis of his claim.
■ NOUN
consequence
▪ And who can fail to see the disastrous consequences?
▪ Each man lacks the stamina to confront the disastrous consequences of unbridled and law-breaking greed.
▪ I remember November 5, 1953, when a tendency to clear up had rather a disastrous consequence.
▪ It would, however, have disastrous consequences for the poor and in the long term for society as a whole.
▪ This can have disastrous consequences for growing horses who need calcium for bone formation.
▪ Declines in stocking levels can also have disastrous consequences if combined with tourist use.
▪ Environmentalists warn that deforestation of this critical watershed area could have disastrous consequences for downstream regions.
effect
▪ Diarrhetic shellfish toxins have had a disastrous effect on the seafood industry in many parts of the world.
▪ That very inevitability is being challenged today by the accumulation of disastrous effects on body, nature, and place.
▪ The epidemic is having a disastrous effect on the tourist industry.
▪ But human variability can also result in system performance that is disorganized, with negative or even disastrous effects.
▪ The resultant high temperatures and high humidities could have had a disastrous effect on both land and marine faunas.
▪ These new forests have also had a disastrous effect on the quality of loch fishing.
▪ That would have a disastrous effect on economic development.
▪ The corruption had a disastrous effect on quality.
fire
▪ In 1898, six years after Spurgeon's death, the building suffered a disastrous fire and had to be rebuilt.
▪ It would have prospered had it not been for the disastrous fire of 1935 that largely destroyed it.
▪ The bakery's expansion plans come just eighteen months after the business was hit by a disastrous fire.
▪ Frauenfeld was unlucky in the eighteenth century when two disastrous fires wiped out most of the town.
marriage
▪ You would have been my second disastrous marriage.
▪ Was it a disastrous marriage or the betrayal of a good girl?
▪ Hosea uses the bold image of his own disastrous marriage to an unfaithful woman.
result
▪ It was concealed, with disastrous results, for Culpepper and Dereham were executed on 1 December 1540.
▪ He worked the bellows furiously, with disastrous results.
▪ The mistakes of fragmentation have already been made in London, with disastrous results for cycling facilities.
▪ Labor unions continue to wage these dismal quarrels against management with almost uniformly disastrous results for the workers and their communities.
▪ She saw them just as they saw her, and waved to them - with disastrous results.
▪ Another theory is the parachute which drags the load out may have failed to open properly with disastrous results.
▪ Hoare became Foreign Secretary instead, with disastrous results.
▪ A small percentage of women have found that their immunity has worn off with disastrous results.
start
▪ Gustavsson made a disastrous start in men's K1 by falling in and being left behind.
▪ After a disastrous start, the target was slashed to a mere 14m.
▪ Now Whittingham is the target for Brian Clough to help end his side's disastrous start to the season.
▪ It is doubtful that auctioneer John Marion had ever presided over such a disastrous start to an auction.
▪ And he was credited with turning round Channel Four News after a disastrous start.
▪ Instead he will join First Division big spenders Derby, who have made a disastrous start to their multi-million pound promotion campaign.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a disastrous early marriage
▪ A disastrous fire destroyed much of the city in the early 1900s.
▪ A disastrous pesticide spill killed all water life along 40 miles of the river.
▪ Much of the damage wrought by the disastrous three-day storm was still apparent.
▪ There was a fault in the engine design, which had disastrous consequences.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ He worked the bellows furiously, with disastrous results.
▪ I can see that for the marine fishkeeper, a bad test kit could be disastrous.
▪ So I am hoping, sirs, that you can decide between their claims, and avoid such a disastrous outcome.
▪ To have had more public spending rather than less would have been disastrous.
▪ Used carelessly, they can be disastrous for companies, governments, and investors.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Disastrous

Disastrous \Dis*as"trous\, a. [Cf. F. d['e]sastreux. See Disaster.]

  1. Full of unpropitious stellar influences; unpropitious; ill-boding. [Obs.]

    The moon In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds.
    --Milton.

  2. Attended with suffering or disaster; very unfortunate; calamitous; ill-fated; ending in utter failure or ruin; as, a disastrous day; a disastrous termination of an undertaking.

    Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances.
    --Shak. -- Dis*as"trous*ly, adv. -- Dis*as"trous*ness, n.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
disastrous

1580s, "ill-starred," from French désastreux (16c.), from désastre (see disaster) or from Italian desastroso. Meaning "calamitous" is from c.1600. Related: Disastrously.

Wiktionary
disastrous

a. 1 of the nature of a disaster; calamitous. 2 forebode disaster; ill-omened.

WordNet
disastrous

adj. (of events) having extremely unfortunate or dire consequences; bringing ruin; "the stock market crashed on Black Friday"; "a calamitous defeat"; "the battle was a disastrous end to a disastrous campaign"; "such doctrines, if true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory"- Charles Darwin; "it is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it"- Douglas MacArthur; "a fateful error" [syn: black, calamitous, fatal, fateful]

Usage examples of "disastrous".

Gates had been a favorite general officer of the Congress and of Adams, and it had been one of the most disastrous defeats of the war.

When Oliver Wolcott wrote from his office in Washington to tell Fisher Ames of Massachusetts that he would work to defeat Adams and that between Adams and Jefferson there was scarcely a difference, that one would be as disastrous as the other, he was only expressing what many Hamilton Federalists had concluded, taking their cue from their leader.

Spanish domination, this religious organization supported the Spanish in their disastrous rule of the predominantly Amerind population.

The defeat itself was not so disastrous to the Anabaptist cause as were the acts of the leaders when in power.

The trouble was that the Arverni had not forgotten the disastrous war they had fought seventy-five years ago against the most prominent Ahenobarbus of that time.

His endeavor to rationalize the doctrine of Augsburg, especially with reference to the Zwinglians, had disastrous results.

But he never suspected that Bardo had accompanied Mallory Ringess on this disastrous journey.

As his advisers debated the options, Ross Barnett revealed two weaknesses that are common to politicians, but 64AN AMERICAN INSURRECTION would prove potentially disastrous in this crisis: He wanted everyone to love him, and he constantly changed his mind.

Among the events of that disastrous night, the heroic, or rather desperate, courage of John, one of the principal officers of Basiliscus, has rescued his name from oblivion.

None of the reconnaissance Bolos in the direct path of the missile strike survived, but the chaos and massive spikes of EMP generated by the missiles which killed them had a disastrous effect on the missiles which had acquired the rest of the Battalion.

The jailers moved Ron from his isolation cell into a bullpen with a dozen others, an arrangement that proved disastrous.

And we are convinced that if regard be had to the principles we have enunciated in devising, manufacturing, laying and maintaining submarine cables, this class of enterprise may prove as successful as it has hitherto been disastrous.

The excess insulin has a disastrous effect on our waistlines: it causes our fat cells to store extra calories, whether from proteins, fats, or carbohydrates, in the form of body fat.

Of course, he reminded himself, there was a deep gutter dug in front of the mine to carry any water away--water in a firestone mine would be disastrous.

But he is the poorest ruler Florence has had since our disastrous Guelph and Ghibelline civil wars.