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You are here: Home / Language / Where Did the Term “Fiasco” For a Disaster Come From and What Does the Word Mean?

Where Did the Term “Fiasco” For a Disaster Come From and What Does the Word Mean?

March 28, 2020 by Karen Hill

The word fiasco is Italian for an ordinary flask or bottle and comes from the opera.

There, audiences would greet a false note or a bad performance with the cry “Ola fiasco.”

The logic was that they had come to hear perfection but were getting a second-rate performance.

So just as a glass blower’s flawed attempt at a beautiful piece of art was discarded or assigned to be a common flask, the opera was second rate, like a fiasco.

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Filed Under: Language

About Karen Hill

Karen Hill is a freelance writer, editor, and columnist. Born in New York, her work has appeared in the Examiner, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, among others.

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