Make Your Point > Archived Issues > DEBACLE
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pronounce
DEBACLE:
Several ways are correct. I say "deh BOCK ull."
If you like to sound more precise, go with "dee BOCK ull."
To hear it, click here.
connect this word to others:
When everything falls apart, in a sudden collapse, that's an epic fail--or a debacle.
And when someone gets profoundly, crushingly defeated, that's a sh______ing.
Can you recall that one? It's a slang word from the 1930's that entered our general vocabulary. It got even more hip when Obama used it.
(To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.)
definition:
Think of a frozen river, and how the ice bars the water from moving.
In Latin, bacculare literally meant "to unbar."
Now imagine the ice in the river melting in spring: the river has been unbarred, or freed. So you can see how, when bacculare entered French, it became débâcler, which meant "to free," and its noun form, débâcle, meant "a freeing, or breaking up, of ice in a river," as well as "the huge flood that takes place when the ice breaks in a river."
Then, around 1802, probably because this French débâcle sounded so awesome and had such a useful meaning ("a violent flood"), we took it into English.
In English, a debacle can be, quite literally, the breaking up of ice in a river, or the flooding that happens as the ice breaks up. But more often we use the word "debacle" figuratively to mean "a sudden violent collapse, defeat, or failure of any kind."
grammatical bits:
Part of speech:
Noun, the countable kind: "Their debacle was so embarrassing for them;" "This has truly been a debacle."
Other forms:
Just the plural, "debacles."
how to use it:
This word is common, with a formal tone. We can use it to label any kind of disastrous event or series of events, especially when it involves everything falling apart swiftly and completely.
For instance, when we're talking about sports, we might refer to a terrible game, a terrible season, or even a terrible move or play as a debacle. Here's Golf Digest: "Scott was off with a far better opening tee shot than yesterday’s debacle." And here's the Seattle Times: "The Gators offered no excuses for last year’s debacle in Gainesville, a 38-17 drubbing."
Aside from sports, if you poke around in other sections of a newspaper, you'll see the word "debacle" applied to all kinds of terrible events and outcomes, both silly and serious: the sinking of a boat; the failure of an awkward advertisement campaign; the tendency of a certain type of cell phone to, you know, explode without warning.
And debacles can take places in our personal lives, too: "The date was a compete debacle;" "This was supposed to be a fluffy pancake, but it's just a runny debacle."
Often we'll put a descriptive word before "debacle," as in "a financial debacle," "his political debacle," "that fashion debacle," "the fake ID debacle," "that whole embarrassing debacle with the stacks of cold Big Macs," etc.
examples:
"As the media see it, President Trump's [sparsely attended] Tulsa rally was the biggest political debacle in recorded history."
— Howard Kurtz, Fox News, 23 June 2020
"On 26 July 1972, under the headline 'Syphilis Victims in US Study Went Untreated for 40 Years,' the story splashed across the nation's newspapers. Now labelled 'a moral nightmare,' the needless deaths and debilities of the men and their families were detailed. Within the year, the study was stopped, the US Senate and a federal panel investigated, and a lawsuit was filed. The debacle led to the creation of federal guidelines for ethical research."
— Susan M. Reverby, Nature, 18 March 2019
has this page helped you understand "debacle"?
study it:
Explain the meaning of "debacle" without saying "a collapse" or "a catastrophe."
try it out:
Check out the front page of today's newspaper: maybe the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal.
What's going on right now that you might call a debacle? Why?
before you review, play:
Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.
Our game this month is "Faces & Feelings."
If the word you're studying were a facial expression, what would it look like? Maybe one of the seven universal facial expressions, the ones identified by the psychologist Paul Ekman.
In each issue, take a handful of words and assign each to an emotion it inspires. I'll list my answers at the bottom of each issue. Yours might be different from mine, which is okay--words, and emotions, are complex and personal! The goal here is just to interact with our words, to tie them more securely into memory by connecting them to emotion and to the face.
Try this last set today. Match each face on the left to a term on the right:
salvo
saturnine
serpentine
simpatico
Sisyphean
slovenly
skinflint
review this word:
1. A near opposite of DEBACLE is
A. TRIUMPH.
B. SWIFTNESS.
C. ACCEPTANCE.
2. In his novel Marriage, H. G. Wells wrote, "Mr. Pope strolled into the group, with no trace of his recent debacle except a slight _____."
A. grin
B. limp
C. scent of garlic
a final word:
I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love.
I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.
From my blog:
36 ways to study words.
Why we forget words, & how to remember them.
How to use sophisticated words without being awkward.
To be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.
Disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.
Several ways are correct. I say "deh BOCK ull."
When everything falls apart, in a sudden collapse, that's an epic fail--or a debacle.
Think of a frozen river, and how the ice bars the water from moving.
Part of speech:
This word is common, with a formal tone. We can use it to label any kind of disastrous event or series of events, especially when it involves everything falling apart swiftly and completely.
"As the media see it, President Trump's [sparsely attended] Tulsa rally was the biggest political debacle in recorded history."
Explain the meaning of "debacle" without saying "a collapse" or "a catastrophe."
Check out the front page of today's newspaper: maybe the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal.
Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.
1. A near opposite of DEBACLE is
|