debacle

Meaning

Noun

• An event or enterprise that ends suddenly and disastrously, often with humiliating consequences.
• A breaking up of a natural dam, usually made of ice, by a river and the ensuing rush of water.

Related

Similar words

• fiasco

Origin

• From French débâcle, from débâcler from prefix dé- + bâcler [perhaps from unattested Middle French and Old French bâcler], from Vulgar Latin *bacculare, from Latin baculum, from Proto-Indo-European *bak-.
• Also attested in Old French desbacler ("to clear a harbour by getting ships unloaded to make room for incoming ships with lading") and in Occitan baclar ("to close").
• The hypothesis of a derivation from Middle Dutch bakkelen, from bakken has been discredited by the lack of attestation of bakkelen in Middle Dutch and by it having only the meaning "freeze superficially" in Dutch.