What's the difference between catastrophe and tragedy?

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.

Tragedy


Definition:

  • (n.) A dramatic poem, composed in elevated style, representing a signal action performed by some person or persons, and having a fatal issue; that species of drama which represents the sad or terrible phases of character and life.
  • (n.) A fatal and mournful event; any event in which human lives are lost by human violence, more especially by unauthorized violence.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Her story is an incredible tale of triumph over tragedy: a tormented childhood during China's Cultural Revolution, detention and forced exile after exposing female infanticide – then glittering success as the head of a major US technology firm.
  • (2) It is a tragedy that he abandoned Iraq, sacrificing the gains secured by American blood and treasure.
  • (3) The lesson, spelled out by Oak Creek's mayor, Steve Saffidi, was that it shouldn't have taken a tragedy for Sikhs, or anyone else, to find acceptance.
  • (4) Obama is expected to offer personal condolences to his counterpart Park Geun-Hye over the tragedy, but the South's unpredictable northern neighbour is set to dominate the agenda.
  • (5) The Australian prime minister and the Russian president discussed the Malaysia Airlines tragedy during a 15-minute meeting on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit on Tuesday.
  • (6) The second tragedy to strike Jeremy was the death of his wife Caroline.
  • (7) Shavit’s new book, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel , has received plaudits from the cream of the liberal, American, political elite.
  • (8) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Global trade unions called the collapse ‘mass industrial homicide’, while Vogue magazine described it as ‘tragedy on an epic scale’.
  • (9) The deputy prime minister branded the treatment meted out to the four-year-old by his mother, Magdelena Luczak, and stepfather, Mariusz Krezolek, as evil and vile, but suggested it was up to the whole of society to stop such tragedies.
  • (10) Senator Edward Kennedy lived his life precisely at the crossroads of all that he encountered – at the intersection of statesmanship, of history, of moral purpose, of tragedy, of compromise.
  • (11) It’s a huge, huge tragedy.” Kortney Moore, 18, said she was in a writing class when a shot came through the window and hit the teacher in the head.
  • (12) Tragedy was averted because there was a little delay as the prayers did not commence in earnest and the bomb strapped to the body of the girl went off and killed her,” he added.
  • (13) In a therapeutic tragedy perhaps even more widespread than the thalidomide disaster, untold lives were lost between 1949 and 1958 through the administration of inappropriate doses of chloramphenicol to newborn infants.
  • (14) It comes two years after the BSC stripped another Vedanta subsidiary of a safety award after the Observer drew its attention to the firm's involvement in one of the worst industrial tragedies in India's recent history.
  • (15) A s the protests in Turkey continue , spare a thought for the man whose personal tragedy few have the grace to acknowledge – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
  • (16) During his visit to Europe he did not speak at length on the subject of the shooting, but seemed more willing than Giuliani to distance the Dallas tragedy from the Black Lives Matter movement.
  • (17) But obviously if people have been injured or indeed killed that is a tragedy and our sympathies are with the victims and their families.” He added: “We never condone violence – whatever the cause.
  • (18) Sue Capon, who runs Brokerswood country park, said everyone was still coming to terms with the tragedy.
  • (19) They have taken a series of safety measures over the past decade aimed at preventing crowd crushes after tragedies such as the stampede in 2006, which resulted in 350 deaths, a building collapse in the same year which killed 76 and a stampede that killed more than 200 people in 2004.
  • (20) But the tragedy in Scotland is a reminder that public confidence – and even lives – are on the line too.