Words

Disaster

dih-ZAS-ter
A catastrophe, from dis plus aster, an ill star, the heavens voting against you.
Documented

The unfavorable star

Italian disastro, from Latin dis- (bad, away) plus astrum (star): calamity as stellar misalignment. The word entered English in the 16th-17th centuries, when astrological causation was respectable science and comets were still press releases from heaven.

Assessment: Documented: the derivation is uncontested; the astrology was the science of its day.
Stories

Stars as scapegoats

The surviving habit: blaming retrogrades, full moons, and Friday the 13th. Disaster's family, astronaut, astronomy, asterisk (little star), keeps the sky in the vocabulary long after the causality was evicted.

Assessment: Stories: the words outlasted the worldview, which is how etymology usually works.
Interesting claims

Consider and desire

Disaster is one of a hidden constellation: consider (con-sider, to examine the stars, as augurs did), desire (de-sidere, to await from the stars, to long for what the sky withholds). Three everyday words still running on a dead astronomy, Sidereal English.

Assessment: Interesting: sider- roots in consider and desire are standard etymology; the constellation framing is the fun.
Sources and further reading
  1. Oxford English Dictionary, 'disaster'
  2. Italian disastro, 16th-century attestation record
  3. Lewis & Short, 'astrum'
Worth asking

When did the sky stop being responsible for what happens under it?

Open in the interactive archive
GR8YFILES · competing origin stories, labeled by the strength of their evidence · readers 14+