Word.ws English Dictionary

catastrophes

catastrophes is the plural of catastrophe.

catastrophes is the plural of catastrophë.

Meaning of catastrophe

Noun

catastrophe (countable and uncountable, plural catastrophes)

  1. Any large and disastrous event of great significance.
    • The Chernobyl disaster was a catastrophe.
  2. A disaster beyond expectations.
  3. The dramatic event that initiates the resolution of the plot; the dénouement.
    • Pat : he comes like the Cataſtrophe of the old Comedie : my Cue is villanous Melancholly, with a ſighe like Tom o’ Bedlam.c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
  4. A type of bifurcation, where a system shifts between two stable states.

Phrases with catastrophes

Questions about catastrophes

What is catastrophes the plural of?
Catastrophes is the plural of catastrophe.

Words near catastrophes in the dictionary

  1. catastrophal
  2. catastrophe
  3. catastrophe bond
  4. catastrophe bonds
  5. catastrophe theory
  6. catastrophes
  7. catastrophic
  8. catastrophic antiphospholipid syndrome
  9. catastrophic backtracking
  10. catastrophic forgetting
  11. catastrophic interference

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: catastrophes (page history and authors); catastrophe (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “catastrophes.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/catastrophes. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.