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a calamitous or disastrous nature; hence, sudden calamity; great misfortune. The strange catastrophe of affairs now at London. Bp. Buret. The most horrible and portentous catastrophe that nature ever yet saw. Woodward.

Any violent catastrophe, involving sudden and extensive changes of the earth's surface.

Of a pertaining to a catastrophe. B. Powell.

The unraveling or discovery of a plot; the catastrophe, especially of a drama or a romance.

at part which embraces the main action of a play, poem, and the like, and leads on to the catastrophe; -- opposed to protasis.

The final chorus; the catastrophe.

after decay, lapse, or dilapidation; renewal; repair; renovation; renaissance. Some great catastrophe or . . . instauration. T. Burnet.

l means by which the action of a poetic or fictitious work is carried on and brought to a catastrophe; in an extended sense, the contrivances by which the crises and conclusion of a fictitious narrative, in prose or verse, are effected. The machinery, madam, is a term invented by the critics, to signify that part which…

f an intention to inflict evil; a threat or threatening; indication of a probable evil or catastrophe to come. His (the pope's) commands, his rebukes, his menaces. Milman. The dark menace of the distant war. Dryden.

thos of a picture, of a poem, or of a cry. The combination of incident, and the pathos of catastrophe. T. Warton.

A mountain range owing its origin to the progress of a geosynclinal, and ending in a catastrophe of displacement and upturning. Dana.