Hello,
It had to happen, but yes it’s a sad moment. I’ve reached the end of my donated words from the wonderful members of the Teen Book Club at Academy Books. The list included discombobulate, stupdendous, gazebo, instinct, cynical, expiate, and more. It brought me from two storey gazebos with underfloor cooling in Persia to Americans inventing words, with a side order of surly philosophers taunting Alexander the Great. You never know where words will take you – one of the joys of writing this blog.
Today the list takes a final bow with the history of the word catastrophe. For me this word is a synonym of disaster and that’s the first definition in the dictionary – an event causing great and sudden damage and suffering. However, the second meaning listed brings us closer to catastrophe’s roots – the denouement of a drama.

Catastrophe joined the English language in the early 1500s when it was defined as a reversal of what is expected, especially the turning point in a drama or the winding up of the plot. It had traveled via the Latin word catastropha from its Greek source katastrophe (a sudden end). Katastrophe was formed from the verb katastrephein (to overturn, to trample on, to come to an end) which is compounded from kata (down – think about catacombs, for example) and strephein (turn).
I’m no expert on classical Greek theatre, although now I’m thinking I should try it sometime as any story with a massive reversal of fortune and sudden endings as the climactic point sounds very exciting. Perhaps a people living in a land filled with wars between nation states plus sudden earthquakes and eruptions, expected the unexpected to appear in their dramas. They were accepting of interventions by gods and goddesses in their legends too so presumably the catastrophe could also be orchestrated by Zeus or Hades too.
The idea of a catastrophe in English being a dramatic change of fortune moved from the realm of theatre into real life by the early 1700s when catastrophe gained the meaning we know best today – a sudden disaster.
Wishing you a week free of catastrophe, except onstage.
Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,
Grace (@Wordfoolery)