What's the difference between catastrophe and disastrous?

Catastrophe


Definition:

  • (n.) An event producing a subversion of the order or system of things; a final event, usually of a calamitous or disastrous nature; hence, sudden calamity; great misfortune.
  • (n.) The final event in a romance or a dramatic piece; a denouement, as a death in a tragedy, or a marriage in a comedy.
  • (n.) A violent and widely extended change in the surface of the earth, as, an elevation or subsidence of some part of it, effected by internal causes.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) When it was grown, it would bring both ecstasy and catastrophe to women.
  • (2) The effects of brain injury can be catastrophic and long-term so the impact of more research would be vast, but affected numbers are too small so it loses out.
  • (3) After violence had run its bloody course, the country’s rulers conceded it had been a catastrophe that had brought nothing but “grave disorder, damage and retrogression”.
  • (4) Strict precautions are necessary to prevent the catastrophic events resulting from inadvertent gentamicin injection; such precautions should include precise labeling of all injectable solutions on the surgical field, waiting to draw up injectable antibiotics until the time they are needed, and drawing up injectable antibiotics under direct physician observation.
  • (5) In contrast, the 2009 report, "Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment" , published by the New York Academy of Sciences, comes to a very different conclusion.
  • (6) As a result, low-lying areas, including Bangladesh, Florida, the Maldives and the Netherlands, will undergo catastrophic flooding, while in Britain large areas of the Norfolk Broads and the Thames estuary could disappear.
  • (7) It is found that, in contrast to most metallic materials yet in keeping with many ceramics, there are no distinct fracture morphologies in pyro-carbons which are characteristic of a specific mode of loading; fracture surfaces appear to be identical for both catastrophic and subcritical crack growth under either sustained or cyclic loading.
  • (8) In the midst of this catastrophe, the troika is insisting on further austerity to achieve massive primary budget surpluses of 3% in 2015, 4.5% in 2016 and even more in future years.
  • (9) The first report, released last September in Stockholm , found humans were the "dominant cause" of climate change, and warned that much of the world's fossil fuel reserves would have to stay in the ground to avoid catastrophic climate change.
  • (10) "We believe that such a path would be catastrophic for the UK, for Europe and for the protection of human rights around the world."
  • (11) A large number of flight accidents and catastrophes associated with the human factor, high nervous and psychic tension when being on duty, increasing trend towards a greater incidence of psychogenic diseases responsible for pilots to be grounded make it necessary to develop a system of primary psychoprophylaxis of the flying personnel and to help them with various social, psychohygienic and psychoprophylactic measures.
  • (12) This would sound gilded, except here is Klebold, revisiting every detail in a way that implies it might have been easier on her psychologically if there had been a catastrophe in the household, something pointing to why Dylan did what he did.
  • (13) Self-help groups can aid an individual in coping with and adapting to catastrophic illness.
  • (14) Catastrophes, though always regrettable, must be seen as experiments demanding careful analysis and exploitation.
  • (15) This set was called by the authors a syndrome reflecting an overpowering, but latent, unconscious sense of crisis, of a catastrophe ("Catastrophe-syndrome").
  • (16) But Blair's address - "history will forgive us" - was a dubious exercise in group therapy: the cheers smacked of pathetic gratitude, as he piously pardoned the legislators, as well as himself, for the catastrophe of Iraq.
  • (17) I argue that (a) the procedures they used to study confounding were suboptimal because multiple measures of depression and catastrophizing were not employed and (b) the distinctiveness of constructs might better be regarded as a continuous rather than all-or-none (having adequate discriminant validity versus being confounded) concept.
  • (18) Newborn infants with congenital homozygous protein C deficiency develop catastrophic thrombosis (purpura fulminans) and will not survive beyond the neonatal period without protein C replacement.
  • (19) But the humanitarian catastrophes in Syria have been overshadowed by stories about Islamic State .
  • (20) We do not anticipate major impact on psychiatric tasks from some form of catastrophic insurance.

Disastrous


Definition:

  • (a.) Full of unpropitious stellar influences; unpropitious; ill-boding.
  • (a.) Attended with suffering or disaster; very unfortunate; calamitous; ill-fated; as, a disastrous day; a disastrous termination of an undertaking.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) However, we have observed cracks on the Dacron fibers, fiber fracture, fiber protrusion, and poor attachment to the diaphragm, which can cause potentially disastrous complications.
  • (2) This proposal is a purely partisan move that will backfire on the government disastrously.” The Green party accused Osborne of making “efforts to limit the democratic scrutiny of his austerity agenda”.
  • (3) They moved to shore up May’s position after a weekend of damaging leaks and briefings from inside the cabinet, believed to be fuelled by some of those jostling to succeed the prime minister after her disastrous election result.
  • (4) To leave the Euro, says Clarke, would be "disastrous" for the Greeks.
  • (5) There are no easy answers to these problems, but we must recognise that a muri approach is potentially disastrous.
  • (6) Prior planning of the coverage before the excision pays dividends by preventing disastrous complications.
  • (7) But Frank argues the disastrous attempt at curbing markets through currency reform in 2009 has shown the cost of turning back from change.
  • (8) Getting them to safety is now vital.” While the EU’s hotspots approach improved the fingerprinting and security vetting of migrants, the auditors said that funding and relocation “bottlenecks” had extended the detention of migrants, with disastrous consequences for children.
  • (9) He argued that it was vital that we “should give the people of this country a chance to decide”, and that “[the nation was witnessing] a continuation of that old and disastrous system where a few men in charge of the state, wielding the whole force of the state, make secret engagements and secret arrangements, carefully veiled from the knowledge of the people…” This, and a lot more little-known information on the road to the first world war is given in Douglas Newton’s book The Darkest Days .
  • (10) However, the shadow foreign secretary, Douglas Alexander , is adamant Labour could not afford to spend the first two years of government wrestling with a referendum on Europe, pointing to the energy it had expended on the near-disastrous no campaign for the Scotland independence vote.
  • (11) The disastrous launches of SimCity and Battlefield 4 , the confining and somewhat invasive nature of the publisher’s Origin digital gaming platform and the voraciously monetised smartphone version of Dungeon Keeper, have kicked further dents in its reputation.
  • (12) Austin said: "Since the House of Lords judgment, the police have increased their use of the tactic of kettling, with disastrous consequences for the right to peaceful protest and the safety of protesters.
  • (13) By trading Holiday for Noel, the 76ers are effectively ending the Andrew Bynum experiment after one disastrous year and seem likely to start a rebuilding process.
  • (14) Casting a vote for any of the alternative party or independent candidates in November could have truly disastrous effects.
  • (15) If she learns anything from this disastrous outing, I hope itʼs that if sheʼs going to allow the music industry to play her as a sex object, she needs to at least own it.
  • (16) Mike Griffiths, headteacher at Northampton School for Boys, the first high-performing school to become an academy after Gove became secretary of state for education in May 2010, said the issue would not only have a potentially disastrous effect on pupils who failed to get a necessary C grade in English, but also on those hoping to study at elite institutions who fell short of getting As or A*s. "If you are applying to a Russell Group university, for instance, to study medicine or law, and all the applicants have a string of A*s, they will look back to the GCSEs and see a B in English – and that could decide your fate," he said.
  • (17) As well as causing a breakdown in trust between the north and the capital, and between communities in the north, caused by the occupation, the conflict has been economically disastrous.
  • (18) "People forget that I discussed two types of disaster in my book: disastrous developments and disastrous failures to develop."
  • (19) In 1993, at the Branch Davidian religious compound outside Waco, Texas, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms didn’t wait for the sect leader, David Koresh, to leave before attempting to arrest him and got into a gun battle that claimed 10 victims and led to a disastrous 51-day siege culminating in dozens more deaths.
  • (20) Lord of the Rings made him the doomed anti-hero , he was easily the best thing in the disastrous Troy, giving Odysseus guile, wit and that familiar, rough-edged charm, and he terrified TV viewers as property developer John Dawson in the dark and brilliant Red Riding .