1
as in disaster
a sudden violent event that brings about great loss or destruction
more than one natural catastrophe has threatened to destroy their farm over the years
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in failure
something that has failed
the movie was a catastrophe, nearly bankrupting the studio that produced it
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of catastrophe
For a lot of different reasons, however, the loss of Judge to the Yankees was not nearly the catastrophe it was feared to be.
—
Bill Madden,
New York Daily News,
20 June 2026
The results suggest that catastrophe may be near.
—
Janet Loehrke,
USA Today,
19 June 2026
There have been various nuclear blasts plus all of the global warming that’s been going on, various kinds of catastrophes.
—
Fiction Non Fiction,
Literary Hub,
18 June 2026
One is to emphasize Iago—the guileful, insinuating convincingness of this malicious supervillain, who works on Othello to the point where any reasonable man would be deceived and fooled and worked into a rage that can lead to such a catastrophe.
—
David Frum,
The Atlantic,
17 June 2026
See All Example Sentences for catastrophe
Bill Madden,
New York Daily News,
20 June 2026
The results suggest that catastrophe may be near.
—
Janet Loehrke,
USA Today,
19 June 2026
There have been various nuclear blasts plus all of the global warming that’s been going on, various kinds of catastrophes.
—
Fiction Non Fiction,
Literary Hub,
18 June 2026
One is to emphasize Iago—the guileful, insinuating convincingness of this malicious supervillain, who works on Othello to the point where any reasonable man would be deceived and fooled and worked into a rage that can lead to such a catastrophe.
—
David Frum,
The Atlantic,
17 June 2026
See All Example Sentences for catastrophe
Recent Examples of Synonyms for catastrophe
Noun
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Aemond is a murderer, Aegon is a rapist; if either of them ends up on the Iron Throne for good, that would be a disaster.
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On the dusty backroads of Radiator Springs, where Lightning McQueen and his pals live, a shower of meteors threatened to bring destruction upon the quarter-size cars in a scene that disaster movie king Roland Emmerich would endorse.
Noun
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Taking the midway point of those numbers, an opening weekend of $45 million would be a monumental failure.
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Then came this spring’s historic and devastating floods across northern Michigan — in some areas, for the first time anyone can remember — swamping homes, pushing dams to the brink of failure and washing out roadways.
Noun
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First a human scores a model’s outputs — say, how likely a character in a drama would be to react to news of a tragedy with a host of jokes or expressions of sympathy — going back with one score after another to various responses.
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The parents of the teen killed in the horse carriage crash in Central Park are remembering their son as rides resume a week after the tragedy.
Noun
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And just when things could not look rosier, the SaaS apocalypse occurred.
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Not for the faint of heart, California’s Salton Sea conjures a sense of apocalypse.
Noun
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To grade the 50 states and the District of Columbia on their relative natural disaster risks, five measures were developed that account for the frequency and damage of calamities, weighted against population and geographic size.
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The calamity is the deadliest crash involving a B-52 bomber since 1982.
Cite this Entry
“Catastrophe.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/catastrophe. Accessed 27 Jun. 2026.
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