fiasco

Etymology

Recorded in 1855 as theatre slang for “a failure in performance”, and by 1862 in the general sense “ignominious failure”.^[1] It comes via French faire fiasco from Italian far fiasco “to make a bottle”, i.e. to fail,^[1][2] from Italian fiasco (“bottle, flask”),^[3][4] from Late Latin flascō (“bottle”).^[5][6]

The origin of the idiom is obscure: Italian etymologists have proposed various guesses and told stories of incidents in Italian theatrical history.^[3][1] Compare flask.^[3][6]

References

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