Cultural Note
To call a shipwreck a 'disaster' was, in 1590, to blame the stars. The metaphor is dead but the fossil is intact.
Disaster
/dɪˈzɑːstə/ · noun
A sudden calamity.
- Present
- 16th c.
- 16th c.
- Antiquity
Preserved Worldview
Literally: an ill-starred event. The word preserves a cosmology in which human fortune was governed by the alignment of planets.
Meaning Evolution
- Antiquitystar↓
- 16th c.dis- (ill) + astro (star)↓
- 16th c.Misfortune attributed to the stars↓
- PresentA calamity
Philosophical Note
A living linguistic fossil of astrological worldview inside secular modern speech.
Cognates
- astral
- asterisk
- astronomy
Descendants
- disastrous
Source Notes
- · OED
- · Italian Vocabolario della Crusca