fiasco

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (4)  · 
“
The only winners in this fiasco are the election lawyers.

View all »
Definitions (5)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. noun A complete failure.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (2)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (1)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • JFK accepted the blame for the fiasco, and he ordered the retirement of Allen Dulles, Charles Cabell and Richard Bissell who bore responsibility for the failure. —  uncomfortably numb
  • GPLv3 to call a fiasco, it's neglecting what true fiasco really means - e.g. the US invasion in Iraq is a fiasco, it gets worse everyday, and the one responsible is a dumb ass. —  Slashdot: Apache
  • Nevada Homeowners had rights before this fiasco was started and will again. —  Las Vegas Sun Stories: All Sun Headlines
  • My wife Kathy has first-hand experience with this fiasco, as her father and also her ex-husband were Alaska Legislators who served in Juneau as Senators, —  The Absurd Report
  • The Jefferson Parish sewer bond fiasco was the lead item in New York Times financial columnist Gretchen Morgenson's Sunday column on Aug. 31. —  Courthouse News Service
More examples »
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 138 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Add a related word »
Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

debacle ·  madonna ·  blunder ·  predicament ·  plight ·  farce ·  meltdown ·  catastrophe ·  marc ·  gaffe
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. French, from Italian fare fiasco, to make a bottle, fail, from fiasco, bottle (perhaps translation of French bouteille, bottle, error, used by the French for linguistic errors committed by Italian actors on the 18th-century French stage), from Late Latin flascō; see flask.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. Italian fiasco, a flask or bottle; far fiasco, make a fiasco, fail. “In Italy, when a singer fails to please, the audience shout ‘Olà, olà, fiasco,’ perhaps in allusion to the bursting of a bottle.”
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »
/ˈfɪæskə/
by American Heritage

Charts
frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word about once a week.

Recently looked up

taxonomy · interchangeable · trista · utilitarianism · door

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

Glockenspiel · Ersatz · Blaukraut bleibt Blaukraut und Brautkleid bleibt Brautkleid · Haifischschwanzflossenfleischsuppe · Der Kottbusser Postkutscher putzt den Kottbusser Postkutschkasten