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
Vivienne Serret, Miami Herald, 13 June 2025
Trump’s opponents are already depicting this fiasco as emblematic of an administration that loves to shoot itself in the foot, then put the bloody foot in its mouth.
—Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times, 3 June 2025
All summer long, the press brayed about the fiasco, to the point where Sargent fled Paris for London.
—Rachel Syme, New Yorker, 30 May 2025
First, there was the public relations fiasco that led to a social media conspiracy emerging after a security update stealthily installed a mysterious new Windows folder.
—Davey Winder, Forbes.com, 28 May 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 24 Jun. 2025.
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