fiasco
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It's the Word of the Day podcast for May 28th.

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Today's word is fiasco, spelled F-I-A-S-C-O. Fiasco is a noun. A fiasco is a complete failure or disaster. Here's the word used in a sentence from The Sentinel and Enterprise of Fitchburg, Massachusetts by Teresa Brayne.

Fyre's first iteration in 2017 was widely seen as a massive failure. The Luke's accommodations, promised on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma, turned out to be tents, and instead of the promised gourmet fare, guests were served cold cheese sandwiches. After musical acts bailed at the last minute, attendees were left stranded as organizers cancelled the festival entirely.

English speakers picked up the word fiasco from the French, who in turn adopted it from the Italian phrase "fare fiasco" literally "to make a bottle." Just what prompted the development of the meaning "failure from bottle" has remained obscure. One guess is that when a Venetian glassblower would discover a flaw developing in a beautiful piece they were working on, they would turn it into an ordinary bottle and avoid having to destroy the object.

The bottle would naturally represent a failure to the glassblower, whose would-be work of art was downgraded to everyday glassware. This theory, however, remains unsubstantiated. With your Word of the Day, I'm Peter Sokolowski. Visit Merriam-Webster.com today for definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups.