A wildly misused word is “disaster.” (“Crisis” is another similarly misused word, but that’s the subject of other discussions.)
“Disaster” is used in the public arena to describe almost any negative situation. News media and social media use it to exaggerate, especially where images are available to dramatize. Common use of the word today is in phrases like “social media disaster,” “PR disaster,” and so on. It is also used to exaggerated effect in sentences like “His presentation today was a disaster” and “Her clothes sense is a disaster.”
The English language offers many alternatives to “disaster” and “disastrous.” Using some of these will add color to your content. To help you avoid disastrous overuse of the word, here is a list of 69 alternatives. Please note that some of the words are not necessarily direct synonyms, but can be used to more accurately describe various unfortunate situations:
- accident
- adversity
- affliction
- bad news
- bane
- bitter pill
- blight
- blow
- breakdown
- break up
- bust
- cataclysm
- calamity
- casualty
- catastrophe
- collapse
- collision
- crash
- crushing
- danger
- debacle
- defeat
- depression
- destructive
- disheartening
- dire
- downfall
- emergency
- eruption
- failure
- fall
- farce
- fiasco
- flop
- frightful
- grief
- hardship
- harm
- hazard
- horrendous
- incident (suggested by Jasmine)
- mess
- misery
- mischance
- misfortune
- mishap
- misadventure
- misfortune
- pathetic
- ravaging
- reverse
- rough
- ruin
- ruination
- ruinous
- setback
- shambles
- shock
- slip
- staggering blow
- strife
- tragedy
- trouble
- undoing
- upheaval
- upset
- washout
- woe
- wrack and ruin
My acknowledgment to dedicated word lover, Laura Hale Brockway, who wrote an initial list of 50 alternative words to “disaster.”
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