Spelling.School · How to spell

How to spell disastrous

hear itdis·as·trous/dɪ'zæstrəs/adjectiveAcademic

What it means: Having extremely unfortunate or dire consequences.

In a sentence: The storm was so disastrous that it blew the roof off the house.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as disasterous or disastrus.

Same family: disaster, disastrously, catastrophic, ruinous, devastating. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Disastrous” comes from the word “disaster,” which originally meant a bad ‘star’ or unlucky astrological event in Italian and French. The suffix “-ous” turns the noun into an adjective, meaning ‘full of disaster’ or ‘causing disaster.’

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa) · Prefixes keep every letter

Try spelling it

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