A disaster is a sudden, serious event such as a flood, fire, or crash that causes great damage or suffering. People also use it informally for anything that goes very badly.
From Italian 'disastro', from 'dis-' meaning 'bad' and 'astro' meaning 'star', based on the old belief that unlucky stars caused terrible events. It originally meant a 'bad star' influence.
The word literally blames the stars for our worst days—'dis-aster' is a 'bad star'. Before science, people didn’t just say, 'That was unlucky'; they thought the whole sky was against them.
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