2022-02-08 ศัพท์ น่าสับสน - Set – D - disaster & holocaust & tragedy

Revision D

2022-02-08

ศัพท์ น่าสับสน - Set – D - disaster & holocaust & tragedy

แนะนำการใช้ ตามที่ส่วนใหญ่ใช้ แต่ละท้องถิ่น 

ความหมาย อาจผันแปร ตาม ตำแหน่ง/หน้าที่ ในประโยค

 

Dictionary.com:

ออกเสียง disaster = “di-ZAS-ter” or “dih-ZAH-ster”

ออกเสียง holocaust = “HOL-uh-kawst” or “HOH-luh-kawst”

ออกเสียง tragedy = “TRAJ-i-dee”

 

Dictionary of Problem Words and Expression

disaster & holocaust & tragedy

A disaster is an event causingdamage or hardship. 

The word comes from Greek and Latin terms suggesting “from the stars” 

and hence has a connotation of bad luck: 

“Lilian felt that the loss of all her money was a minor disaster.” 

“The collision of the cars was a disaster, but not a fatal one.”

 

Holocaust comes from a Greek word meaning “burnt” or “burned" 

and refers to complete devastation or destruction. 

That is, a holocaust is a disaster, 

but a disaster is not necessarily a holocaust.   

Floods, collisions, train wrecks, 

and accidents of many kinds are disaster, 

but holocaust is a term that should be reserved 

for immense destruction and widespread devastation: 

“The bombs falling in the crowded area resulted in a holocaust.”

 

Tragedy, a more general term, refers to any calamity or disaster, 

any dreadful or fatal event. 

One may, for instance, 

refer to the disaster or holocaust or tragedy of modern warfare.

 

Dictionary.com: & Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary

 

SYNONYM STUDY FOR DISASTER

Disaster, Calamity, Catastrophe, Cataclysm 

refer to adverse happenings often occurring suddenly and unexpectedly.

A disaster may be caused by carelessness, negligence, bad judgment, 

or the like, or by natural forces, as a hurricane or flood: 

a railroad disaster. 

 

Calamity suggests great affliction, either personal or general;

the emphasis is on the grief or sorrow caused: 

the calamity of losing a child. 

 

Catastrophe refers especially 

to the tragic outcome of a personal or public situation; 

the emphasis is on the destruction or irreplaceable loss: 

the catastrophe of a defeat in battle. 

 

Cataclysm, physically an earth-shaking change, 

refers to a personal or public upheaval of unparalleled violence: 

a cataclysm that turned his life in a new direction.

 

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

disaster & holocaust & tragedy

Did you know?

Disaster has its roots 

in the belief that the positions of stars 

influence the fate of humans, often in destructive ways; 

its original meaning in English was 

"an unfavorable aspect of a planet or star." 

 

The word comes to us through Middle French 

and the Old Italian word disastro, 

from the Latin prefix dis- and Latin astro, meaning "star." 

Another unfortunate word 

that comes to us from astrological beliefs is "ill-starred."

 

Now generally used in the sense of "unlucky" 

or "having or destined to a hapless fate," 

"ill-starred" was originally used literally 

to describe someone born under or guided by an evil star. 

 

We also have star-crossed, 

meaning "not favored by the stars" or "ill-fated."

 

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Disaster

Definition: an unfavorable aspect of a planet or star

The two earliest senses of disaster 

began at almost the same exact time 

(our earliest record of each comes from the middle of the 16th century);

 the sense of “a great and sudden misfortune” 

appears to have come slightly after the sense relating to a star. 

 

Disaster (which has the Latin word for “star”, astro, in its etymology)

is not the only word in English to have been formed 

based on the supposed influence of stars: 

the flu is a shortening of influenza,

which comes from the Medieval Latin word for “influence,” 

based on the notion that epidemics were influenced by the stars.

 

THE NEW DICTIONARY OF CULTURAL LITERACY, THIRD EDITION:

holocaust

The killing of some six million Jews (see also Jews) 

by the Nazis during World War II. 

To the Nazis, 

the Holocaust was the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish problem,” 

and would help them establish a pure German master race. 

Much of the killing took place in concentration camps,

such as Auschwitz and Dachau. (See Adolf Eichmann and Heinrich Himmler.)

 

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Trend Watch

Holocaust Remembrance Day

January 27 is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau

27 Jan 2017

January 27 is Holocaust Remembrance Day, 

and holocaust spiked in lookups.

Holocaust is the name given to the mass slaughter of European civilians 

and especially Jews by the Nazis during World War II. 

Its original meaning, “a burnt sacrifice,” reflects its etymology; 

it comes from the Greek word holokaustos, meaning “burnt whole.”

 

Caustic and cauterize both come from the word’s ultimate root, 

kaustos, the Greek word for “burnt.” From “burnt sacrifice,” 

holocaust took the general meaning 

“a thorough destruction involving 

extensive loss of life especially throughfire”  before being used

(often capitalized) as the specific name for the Nazi horrors.

 

Though holocaust was sometimes used in the 1940s 

with reference to Nazi-perpetrated mass murder, 

it didn’t become establishedas a name for the historical event 

until the mid-1950s. 

The Hebrew word Shoah, meaning “catastrophe,” 

began to be used in English as a synonym for Holocaust in 1967.

 

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language:

hol′o·caus′tal, hol′o·caus′tic adj.

Usage Note: 

Holocaust has a secure place in the language 

when it refers to the massive destruction of humans by other humans. 

In our 1987 survey 99 percent of the Usage Panel accepted 

the use of holocaust in the phrase nuclear holocaust. 

Sixty percent accepted the sentence 

As many as two million people may have died in the holocaust 

that followed the Khmer Rouge takeover in Cambodia. 

 

But because of its associations with genocide, 

people may object to extended applications of holocaust. 

The percentage of the Panel's acceptance drops sharply 

 

when people use the word 

to refer to death brought about by natural causes. 

In our 1999 survey 47 percent approved the sentence 

 

In East Africa five years of drought have brought about a holocaust 

in which millions have died. Just 16 percent approved. 

 

The press gives little coverage to the holocaust of malaria that goes on, 

year after year, in tropical countries, 

where there is no mention of widespread mortality. 

The Panel has little enthusiasm for more figurative usages of holocaust. 

In 1999, only 7 percent accepted 

Numerous small investors lost their stakes in the holocaust 

that followed the precipitous drop in stocks. 

This suggests that these extended uses of the word may be viewed 

as overblown or in poor taste.

 

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language:

Word History: 

Totality of destruction has been central to the meaning of holocaust 

since it first appeared in Middle English in the 1300s, 

used in reference to the biblical sacrifice 

in which a male animal was wholly burnt on the altar in worship of God. 

 

Holocaust comes from Greek holokauston, 

"that which is completely burnt," 

which was a translation of Hebrew 'ōlâ (literally "that which goes up," 

that is, in smoke). 

In this sense of "burnt sacrifice," 

holocaust is still used in some versions of the Bible. 

 

In the 1600s, the meaning of holocaust 

broadened to "something totally consumed by fire," 

and the word eventually was applied to fires of extreme destructiveness.

 

In the 1900s, holocaust took on a variety of figurative meanings, 

summarizing the effects of war, rioting, storms, epidemic diseases, 

and even economic failures. 

 

Most of these usages arose after World War II, 

but it is unclear 

whether they permitted or resulted from the use of holocaust 

in reference to the mass murder of European Jews and others by the Nazis. 

This application of the word occurred as early as 1942, 

but the phrase 

the Holocaust did not become established until the late 1950s. 

 

Here it parallels and may have been influenced by another Hebrew word, 

šô'â, "catastrophe" (in English, Shoah). 

In the Bible šô'â has a range of meanings including 

"personal ruin or devastation" and "a wasteland or desert." 

Šô'â was first used to refer to the Nazi slaughter of Jews in 1939, 

but the phrase haš-šô'â, "the catastrophe," 

became established only after World War II. 

 

Holocaust has also been used to translate ḥurbān, "destruction," 

another Hebrew word 

used as a name for the genocide of Jews by the Nazis.

 

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Tragedy

Definition: a medieval narrative poem or tale, 

typically describing the downfall of a great man

Some portions of the changes in the meaning of tragedy 

are rather easy to understand; 

the word’s initial sense was concerned with a narrative poem 

(such as Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde). 

Since such poems often had endings that were other than happy 

it is not difficult to see how the word might come to mean 

“a very bad event.” 

Less obvious is the etymology of the word, 

which is thought to be a combination of 

the Greek word for “he-goat” 

and a root denoting “singing” 

(a possible explanation for this 

is that the tragedies of Ancient Greece 

were influenced by the Peloponnesian satyr plays, 

in which the satyrs in question had a goatlike form).