catastrophe
Noun
Meaning
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 final event in a romance or a dramatic piece; a denouement, as a death in a tragedy, or a marriage in a comedy.
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.
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Examples
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
The notion that one will not survive a particular catastrophe is, in general terms, a comfort since it is equivalent to abolishing the catastrophe.
A hundred times I have thought: New York is a catastrophe, and fifty times: it is a beautiful catastrophe.
For similar folly, our own country, in the transition from the colonial period, also paid a fearful price; and from a like catastrophe the United States has been twice saved in our time by the arguments formulated by Turgot.
To lose a passport was the least of one's worries. To lose a notebook was a catastrophe.