| 释义 |
▪ I. disaster, n.|dɪˈzɑːstə(r), -æ-|
Also 7 dys-.
[ad. F. désastre (1564 in Hatz.-Darm.) ‘a disaster, misfortune, calamitie, misadventure, hard chance’; f. des-, dis- 4 + astre ‘a starre, a Planet; also destinie, fate, fortune, hap’ (Cotgr.), ad. L. astrum, Gr. ἄστρον star; after It. disastro ‘disastre, mischance, ill lucke’ (Florio). Cf. Pr., Sp., Pg. desastre, also Pr. benastre good fortune, malastre ill fortune, and Eng. ill-starred.]
†1. An unfavourable aspect of a star or planet; ‘an obnoxious planet’. Obs.
1602Shakes. Ham. i. i. 118 Stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Disasters in the sun; and the moist star, Upon whose influence Neptunes empire stands, Was sick almost to dooms-day with eclipse. 1635Quarles Embl., Hieroglyph vii, What dire disaster bred This change, that thus she veils her golden head?
2. a. Anything that befalls of ruinous or distressing nature; a sudden or great misfortune, mishap, or misadventure; a calamity. Usually with a and pl., but also without a, as ‘a record of disaster’.
‘Disaster is etymologically a mishap due to a baleful stellar aspect’ (Whitney Life Lang. vi. (1875) 99).
1591Horsey Trav. (Hakluyt Soc.) 253 Let those soulls suffer that ar the occasioners of thy disaster and myne. 1598Florio, Disastro, disastre, mischance, ill lucke. 1601Shakes. All's Well iii. vi. 55 It was a disaster of warre that Cæsar him selfe could not haue preuented. 1605― Lear i. ii. 131 We make guilty of our disasters the Sun, the Moone, and Starres. 1659B. Harris Parival's Iron Age 100 Fate, it seems, would needs involve them in the same disasters. 1770Goldsm. Des. Vill. 200 Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to trace The day's disasters in his morning's face. 1849Macaulay Hist. Eng. I. 84 Faithlessness was the chief cause of his disasters, and is the chief stain on his memory. 1874Morley Compromise (1886) 27 Such a system must inevitably bring disaster.
†b. A bodily affliction or disorder. Obs. rare.
1684F. Rogers Let. in Sir H. Slingsby's Diary (1836) 377, I am very ill of a disaster upon my stomach, yt I cannot ride.
3. attrib., as disaster area, an area in which a major disaster has occurred; also fig.; disaster movie, a film of which the plot centres around a catastrophe or major accident, esp. one involving many people; also, disaster film.
1960Times 14 Sept. 8/1 President Eisenhower designated sections of the state [of Florida] a major *disaster area. 1969M. Drabble Waterfall 244, I was merely a disaster area, a landscape given to such upheavals. 1970Guardian 25 Nov. 2/1 Pakistani officials..described the difficulties they had experienced in bringing aid to the disaster area.
1975Times 7 Feb. 7/6 The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3..has..a touch of the current ‘*disaster film’ cycle.
1976Times 10 Jan. 7/1 My 12-year-old daughter..has loved every *disaster movie since The Poseidon Adventure. 1986Christian Science Monitor 15 July 30, I began to see that what appeared to be an evacuation scene from a disaster movie was actually a quite efficient operation.
▪ II. † diˈsaster, a. Obs.
[Either an attrib. use of the n., or repr. obs. F. desastré (Cotgr.) disastrous, f. desastre disaster. The simple word is not used as an adj. in any Romanic lang.]
= disastrous.
1590Greene Never too late (1600) 23 No disaster fortune could driue her to make shipwrack of her fixed affection. Ibid. 28 Saturne conspiring with all balefull signes, calculated the houre of thy birth full of disaster accidents. 1600Look about you xxix. in Hazl. Dodsley VII. 481 Let this be to me a disaster day. 1603Knolles Hist. Turks (1638) 167 Whom disaster fortune..hath inforced to wander here and there.
▪ III. † diˈsaster, v. Obs.
[f. disaster n. No corresp. vb. is found in the Romanic langs., though French had in 16th c. the ppl. adj. desastré: see disaster a.]
trans. To bring disaster or misfortune upon; to strike with calamity; to ruin, afflict, injure seriously, endamage.
(Todd's sense ‘To blast by the stroke of an unfavourable star’, repeated in later Dicts., seems to be unsupported; his quotation is of a ppl. a. in sense ‘ill-starred,’ ‘hapless’.)
1580[see disastered]. 1606Shakes. Ant. & Cl. ii. vii. 16 The holes where eyes should bee, which pittifully disaster the cheeks. 1607Topsell Four-f. Beasts (1658) 158 Neither was there ever any more easie way to disaster these monster-seeming souldiers [elephants in battle] then by casting of stones. 1689Moyle Sea Chyrurg. ii. xiii. 61 The Cable running out, a Kink therein happened to disaster a Man's Leg. 1778M. Cutler in Life, etc. (1888) I. 70 The French fleet was so disastered they could by no means afford us any assistance. 1784Ibid. 107 This occasioned the thermometer's being more slightly secured..and..it was so disastered as to lose almost all the mercury. 1812W. Tennant Anster F. iii. lvi, Some were cuff'd and much disaster'd found.
Hence † diˈsastered, stricken with disaster; ill-starred, hapless. Obs.
1580Sidney Arcadia ii. (1613) 163 Ah, chastest bed of mine..how canst thou now receiue this desastred changeling? 1598Barret Theor. Warres v. i. 170 At his disastred iourney made into Barbary. 1726–46Thomson Winter 279 In his own loose revolving fields, the swain Disastered stands. |