Link Centre Dictionary

calamitous

ca·la·mi·tous

US/kəˈlæmɪtəs/ uncommon obsolete

adjective

1.

(of events) having extremely unfortunate or dire consequences; bringing ruin

  • “the stock market crashed on Black Friday”
  • “a calamitous defeat”
  • “the battle was a disastrous end to a disastrous campaign”
  • “such doctrines, if true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory” Charles Darwin
  • “it is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it” Douglas MacArthur
  • “a fateful error”
Synonyms
Similar

Origin

Borrowed from French calamiteux (“calamitous”) (see French -eux, English -ous), from Latin calamitōsus (“destructive, disastrous, ruinous, calamitous”), a contraction of calamitātōsus, from calamitāt- + -ōsus (suffix meaning ‘full of; prone to’ forming adjectives from nouns); calamitāt- is the oblique stem of calamitās (“disaster, misfortune, calamity; damage, harm; loss”), from *calamis (“damaged”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kelh₂- (“to beat; to break”)) + -tās (suffix forming abstract nouns denoting a condition or state). By surface analysis, calamity + -ous.

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.