DISASTERS Synonyms: 73 Similar and Opposite Words

disasters

noun

plural of disaster

as in catastrophes

a sudden violent event that brings about great loss or destruction hurricanes are natural disasters

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

as in failures

something that has failed an utter disaster, the play opened and closed on the same miserable night

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Recent Examples of disasters If college is defined by unbelievable disasters that become lifelong stories, then this singular tale of friendship is forged in the aftermath of connecting through a very public mistake. — Alison Foreman, IndieWire, 17 Sep. 2026 Deforestation contributes to erosion, damages biodiverse areas, threatens wildlife and humans who rely on the forest, and intensifies disasters from extreme weather. — ABC News, 13 Sep. 2026 Getting an accurate count of immigrants of various statuses is useful when assigning resources for public health emergencies or natural or human-made disasters. — Terry Tang, Los Angeles Times, 11 Sep. 2026 The chapter also examines military disasters caused not by geography but by failures of leadership, organization, discipline, and judgment. — Ethan Teekah, Encyclopedia Britannica, 11 Sep. 2026 For many businesses in Nepal, the floods threaten to compound lingering pain from previous disasters and economic shocks. — Stephanie Yang, CNN Money, 11 Sep. 2026 These dollars are all coming out of the Emergency Preparedness and Response Fund, a pool created in 2022 allowing DeSantis to quickly pay for disasters without legislative approval. — Liv Caputo, Miami Herald, 11 Sep. 2026 Records from older disasters are often incomplete, and some estimates include people who died from famine, disease and displacement in the months that followed, while others count only deaths directly caused by the flood. — Kaif Shaikh, Interesting Engineering, 6 Sep. 2026 Being able to better understand these trends and know what tools will be available to manage them could thus do much to shore up food networks and prepare for disasters. — Anna Nelson, Foreign Affairs, 4 Sep. 2026

Recent Examples of Synonyms for disasters

Noun

Syria became one of the great human catastrophes of our time.

— Ayman M. Mohyeldin, Vanity Fair, 11 Sep. 2026
Returns, however, can be negative in a year when there is a much higher than average incidence of catastrophes and insurance claims have to be paid out.

— Cheryl Winokur Munk, CNBC, 10 Sep. 2026

Definition of catastrophes

Noun

That makes preventing deployment and routing failures especially important as these fleets expand.

— Kurt Knutsson, FOXNews.com, 19 Sep. 2026
Built in 1965, the JFK was the oldest ferry in the Staten Island fleet when it was retired last August due to mechanical failures.

— Antonio Ferme, Variety, 19 Sep. 2026

Definition of failures

Noun

Most workplace tragedies, sadly, never get that attention, even though more than 5,000 people die from accidents at work every year.

— Matt Helmer, Washington Post, 9 Sep. 2026
Find positive, proactive ways that can prevent these kinds of tragedies from ever happening again.

— Chicago Tribune, Chicago Tribune, 8 Sep. 2026

Definition of tragedies

Noun

There were five five-star QBs in that class, of which only one, Texas’s Arch Manning, remains at his original school, and two, Jackson Arnold and Malachi Nelson, have been major disappointments.

— Stewart Mandel, New York Times, 9 Sep. 2026
Earnings disappointments led to our exits from Procter & Gamble and Dover .

— Morgan Chittum, CNBC, 3 Sep. 2026

Definition of disappointments

Noun

Based on Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, the surrealist musical follows one nuclear family across thousands of years and three apocalypses.

— Jason P. Frank, Vulture, 10 Dec. 2025
And a lot of the pseudepigrapha, like the fake gospels and fake apocalypses, fill in gaps in the record that can serve latter-day, post-biblical purposes.

— JSTOR Daily, JSTOR Daily, 16 Oct. 2025

Definition of apocalypses

Noun

Tests of nuclear bombs, such as those conducted in Nevada during the Cold War, have long been known to cause small, detectable earthquakes.

— Katie Hunt, CNN Money, 17 Sep. 2026
The 2,000-pound bombs have been employed by Israel on hundreds of occasions in Gaza and Lebanon, playing a significant role in the death toll of those conflicts.

— Arkansas Online, Arkansas Online, 16 Sep. 2026

Definition of bombs

Noun

To avert future calamities, the forest outside Bordeaux must be thinned and its fire breaks widened, said Arthur Guérin-Turcq, a Sorbonne University geographer whose family cultivates pines near Le Porge.

— Michael Finnegan, Los Angeles Times, 30 Aug. 2026
Indeed, conflict and calamities are major factors in financial repression.

— Jason Ma, Fortune, 23 Aug. 2026

Definition of calamities

Noun

The biggest losers right now are truckload carriers, especially small firms or owner-operators.

— Kevin Williams, CNBC, 17 Sep. 2026
But the specific way markets are taking root—with much of the population too poor to participate meaningfully, with no rule of law, and with the gap between winners and losers steadily widening—is pernicious for the country’s future.

— Will Freeman, Foreign Affairs, 17 Sep. 2026

Definition of losers

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disaster

disasters

disastrous

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“Disasters.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/disasters. Accessed 22 Sep. 2026.

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Synonyms of disasters

noun

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