cataclysmic
/katəˈklɪzmik
/adjective
1(Of a natural event) large-scale and violent: a cataclysmic earthquake...
- Eventually the entire surface founders in a cataclysmic event, leading to volcanic resurfacing on a global scale, followed by tectonic deformation of some areas as the new surface settles down.
- A cataclysmic event during this period detached most of the crystal groups from the cavern walls and ceiling.
- Despite the world's brightest researchers, the latest GPS technology and powerful computer models, scientists cannot reliably forecast the cataclysmic geological events.
Synonyms
disastrous, catastrophic, calamitous, tragic, devastating, ruinous, terrible, violent, awful
1.1Causing sudden and violent upheaval: a novel about a cataclysmic world war...
- When Marx and Engels turned their attention to the cataclysmic upheaval in India, they saw it in relation to similar developments taking place in other parts of the world.
- A cataclysmic upheaval was experienced by the other princely families when the privy purses were abolished in 1971.
- Our foreparents lived through sea changes, upheavals so cataclysmic, so devastating we may never appreciate the fortitude and resilience required to survive them.
1.2 informal Used to emphasize the extent of something bad or unwelcome: the concert was a cataclysmic failure...
- Anyone who watches such cataclysmic events unfold can somehow claim them as their own.
- Others have experienced in their lives some sort of cataclysmic event, and now they make lots of money telling everyone else about it.
- As she notes in her essay, individuals and groups generally draw on familiar ‘frames of acceptance’ in grappling with traumatic or cataclysmic events.
Derivatives
cataclysmically
- Like the neighboring settlements at Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Oplontis, it was buried in volcanic ash when Vesuvius erupted cataclysmically in A.D. 79.
- For changes can happen imperceptibly, but also cataclysmically.
- The work was stylistically naive, but it was also passionate, content-charged, sometimes cataclysmically violent, and often evocative of altered-consciousness states like those familiar to consumers of mind-altering drugs.