- A great, often sudden calamity.
- A complete failure; a fiasco: The food was cold, the guests quarreled-the whole dinner was a catastrophe.
- The concluding action of a drama, especially a classical tragedy, following the climax and containing a resolution of the plot.
- A sudden violent change in the earth's surface; a cataclysm.
[Greek katastrophē, an overturning, ruin, conclusion, from katastrephein, to ruin, undo : kata-, cata- + strephein, to turn.]





