disaster

Etymology

Recorded from the later 16th century,^[1][2] borrowed from Middle French desastre,^[1][3] from Italian disastro (“ill-starred”),^[2][4] from pejorative dis- + astro “star”,^[4][2] from Latin astrum (“star”), from Ancient Greek ἄστρον (ástron, “star”),^[4][3] ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂stḗr (“star”).^[5] The sense is astrological: a calamity blamed on an unfavourable position of a planet.^[2] Compare ill-starred.^[6][2]

References

1. [1] [2] Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
2. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. [1] [2] Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
4. [1] [2] [3] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Boston: Houghton Mifflin
5. [1] Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
6. [1] Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press