Disaster means "bad star
The word disaster comes from Italian dis-astro, a bad star, and belongs to a big family of star words.
The word
Disaster comes from the Italian disastro: dis- (bad, ill, apart) plus astro (star). It reached English through French désastre in the late 1500s.
The idea behind it is astrology. People believed the position of the stars and planets ruled what happened on Earth. A catastrophe meant the stars had lined up against you, an "ill-starred" event. So every time a disaster response team deploys, it is, in the oldest sense of the word, answering a bad star.
The Greek and Latin root
The root goes back to Greek astēr / astron (star), which also gave Latin astrum. Words in the same family:
- Astronomy: astron + nomos (law, arrangement), the laws of the stars
- Astrology: astron + logos (word, study), reading the stars for meaning
- Astronaut: astron + nautēs (sailor), a star sailor (see the next topic)
- Asterisk (\): asteriskos*, "little star", the star-shaped mark on a page
- Aster: the flower named for its star-shaped bloom
- Asteroid: "star-like", because early telescopes showed them as points like stars
- Disaster: the bad star
Shakespeare used it this way
In King Lear, Edmund mocks people who "make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars." He means it literally: blaming the stars. See Edmund's star speech.
Key facts
- Disaster: Italian dis-astro, bad star
- Astro words share Greek astron (star): astronomy, astrology, astronaut, asterisk, aster, asteroid
- "Ill-starred" carries the same astrology idea in plain English