catastrophic

catastrophe | American Dictionary

catastrophe
noun[ C ]
us/kəˈtæs·trə·fi/
a sudden event that causes great suffering or destruction:
Losing his job was a financial catastrophe for his family.
A chemical plant leak could cause an environmental catastrophe.

catastrophic

adjectiveus/ˌkæt̬·əˈstrɑf·ɪk/
Continued rain will cause catastrophic flooding.

Examples of catastrophe

catastrophe
The chapter concludes with showstoppers to this vision such as bolide impacts, climatic change, astronomical catastrophes and, of course, humanity's greatest enemy, itself.
Lack of oscillations means the onset of catastrophes.
Farmers draw on local ties to enhance their economic pursuits and to circumvent potential catastrophes brought on by economic insecurity and structural adjustment.
Cultural connectors, like catastrophes and fractals, remained, but would quickly wither.
What appear to be sound development decisions today, can turn into human catastrophes in historical perspective when the true costs of the decision and the errors of judgment emerge.
Dramatic catastrophes offer excellent points at which to probe the structures of particular cultures and eras, not least of all because they spur so much self-reflection.
Structurally, this required the transformation of the model from a 'safety net', providing interventions after clinical catastrophes, to a model focusing on health promotion and disease prevention.
An understanding of the developments made in improving the ability of organisations to manage the risk of catastrophes occurring may provide useful lessons for child protection services.
In contrast, environmental interactions that result in an overuse of common-property resources are not so easy to detect-at least, not unless some threshold is reached and catastrophes occur.
The resultant decreased overall metabolic rate at decreased temperatures offers a greater margin of safety if there are any catastrophes with the apparatus used for bypass.
The effective population size in the presence of catastrophes.
The archaeology of geological catastrophes.
Climate change has turned this summer into a catalogue of catastrophes.
From Europarl Parallel Corpus - English
What this article says is that, in the case of natural catastrophes, national aid may be compatible.
From Europarl Parallel Corpus - English
Since 1990, according to insurance company statistics, the annual damage due to weather catastrophes has more than doubled and the compensation paid out has quadrupled.
From Europarl Parallel Corpus - English
See all examples of catastrophe
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations withcatastrophe

catastrophe

These are words often used in combination with catastrophe.

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

catastrophe theory
And much of his interpretation of the kind of knowledge produced by catastrophetheory depended on this answer.
ecological catastrophe
Yet, dedicated as it is to ' ' rejection, ' ' it cannot in our time retain its traditional privilege of superior wisdom : ecologicalcatastrophe implicates us all.
economic catastrophe
That revolution brought so much political change so quickly that the political crisis that followed it has now led to economiccatastrophe.
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