- Today's Word
Calamity
[kuh-LAM-i-tee]
Definition
- (noun) A great misfortune or catastrophe; an event that brings terrible loss, distress, or misery. As a noun, it refers to any disastrous event that causes extensive damage or hardship, whether personal or widespread.
Example
The great fire of 1871 was a calamity that left much of Chicago in ruins, but ultimately led to the city’s remarkable architectural rebirth.
Fun Fact
The word “calamity” derives from the Latin “calamitas,” which originally referred to damage to crops, possibly stemming from an ancient farming term meaning “destruction of stalks.” Medieval Latin scholars connected it to “calamus” meaning “reed” or “stalk,” though modern etymologists debate this connection. During the Middle Ages, the word evolved beyond agricultural usage to describe any disastrous event. The term gained particular prominence in the American Old West with the nickname of Martha Jane Cannary, better known as “Calamity Jane,” a famous frontierswoman who claimed she got her nickname because she warned men that to offend her was to court calamity.
(adjective) Prone to speaking at excessive length about trivial or loosely connected subjects; tiresomely talkative.
The garrulous professor spent so long on his opening anecdote that he never actually reached the lecture — and somehow, nobody minded.
Garrulous derives from the Latin garrulus, meaning “talkative” or “chattering,” rooted in garrire — “to chatter” or “to babble.” The same root gives us gargle, both words sharing the sense of sound produced loosely and without great purpose. It entered English in the 17th century, used to describe the kind of talker who fills every silence not because they have something to say but because silence itself is intolerable to them.