“Disaster” Was Once Written in the Stars
Today, a disaster can be an earthquake, a financial collapse—or simply a badly burned dinner. But the word originally described something far above us: an unfavorable star.
Disaster entered English through Middle French désastre and Italian disastro. It combines dis-, suggesting something bad or unfavorable, with astro, meaning “star” or “heavenly body,” from Latin astrum.
The word arose from an ancient astrological belief: the positions of stars and planets could determine human fortune. If someone suffered terrible misfortune, people might conclude that the person had been born under a hostile celestial arrangement—a “bad star.”
Gradually, disaster shifted from describing the supposed astronomical cause of misfortune to describing the misfortune itself. By the 16th century, English speakers were using it for ruinous events and overwhelming calamities.
Its stellar ancestry survives in expressions such as ill-starred and Shakespeare’s famous star-crossed lovers—people whose futures appear doomed by the heavens.
So when your carefully planned project becomes a complete disaster, you are using a word that once blamed the stars for everything that went wrong. Merriam-Webster
