disastrous

[dih-zas-truhs, -zah-struhs]

adjective

1. causing great distress or injury; ruinous; very unfortunate; calamitous.

   The rain and cold proved disastrous to his health.

2. Archaic.,  foreboding disaster.

Other Word Forms

• disastrously adverb
• disastrousness noun
• nondisastrous adjective
• nondisastrously adverb
• nondisastrousness noun
• predisastrous adjective
• predisastrously adverb
• quasi-disastrous adjective
• quasi-disastrously adverb
• undisastrous adjective
• undisastrously adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of disastrous¹

1580–90; < Middle French desastreux, Italian disastroso. See disaster, -ous

Example Sentences

But, for all those impressive statistics, ending 2025 without a Grand Slam would potentially be disastrous to a serial winner like Sabalenka.

From BBC

Gleeson, whose character tries, against the odds, to breathe life back into local journalism, describes Ned as both earnest and disastrous.

From BBC

Pyne said it’s still too soon to say whether the federal workforce’s “downsizing and whimsical firings” had anything to do with the Dragon Bravo’s fire’s disastrous escape.

From Los Angeles Times

That move has proved disastrous in terms of casualties, domestic economic distress, the mass migration of hundreds of thousands of Russians opposed to the war, and isolation from the global capitalist economy.

From Salon

Zelensky said the call was "long and substantive" and that he would travel to Washington on Monday for his first visit since the disastrous Oval Office encounter in February.

From BBC

Related Words

• adverse 
• calamitous 
• cataclysmic 
• catastrophic 
• destructive 
• dire 
• dreadful 
• fatal 
• fateful 
• harmful 
• ill-fated 
• ruinous 
• terrible 
• tragic 
• unfavorable 
• unfortunate