Margaret Atwood
-ˈa-
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English speakers picked up fiasco from the French, who in turn adopted it from the Italian phrase fare fiasco—literally, "to make a bottle." Just what prompted the development of the meaning "failure" from "bottle" has remained obscure. One guess is that when a Venetian glassblower would discover a flaw developing in a beautiful piece they were working on, they would turn it into an ordinary bottle to avoid having to destroy the object. The bottle would naturally represent a failure to the glassblower, whose would-be work of art was downgraded to everyday glassware. This theory, however, remains unsubstantiated.
Examples of fiasco in a Sentence
Nicholas Creel, MSNBC Newsweek, 22 May 2025
Read: Inside the fiasco at the National Security Council
In saner times, under sounder leadership, changes to the intelligence community would perhaps be welcome.
—James Santel, The Atlantic, 8 May 2025
Now, more federal resources will be wasted on this fiasco as the government tries to move forward with a prosecution of a sitting judge whose alleged crime was simply letting a defendant walk through a different hallway.
—New York Daily News Editorial Board, New York Daily News, 26 Apr. 2025
Why Brexit and bonds are top of mind now
Then-Prime Minister Liz Truss backed a fiasco of a plan that proposed aggressive tax cuts without cost savings.
—Susan Tompor, USA Today, 18 Apr. 2025
See All Example Sentences for fiasco
Cite this Entry
“Fiasco.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fiasco. Accessed 1 Jun. 2025.
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