A disaster of rather epic proportions Fiasco is commonly described as a word of obscure antecedents, which is what makes it all the more interesting to explore

Word of the Week

(noun), a complete, unmitigated, and disastrous failure

Usage: He confidently announced that he expected to win the election, but when he came in last, losing his deposit, his campaign proved to be a total fiasco. copies, few publishers were willing to take a chance on publishing her advice again.”

Fiasco is also unusual in emerging from the world of the theatre, and that too from foreign sources. When the term “fiasco” entered English in the mid-1800s, it meant, according to the “a failure or break-down in a dramatic or musical performance”. It was derived from the French phrase “to make a failure”, in turn coming from the Italian meaning “suffer a complete breakdown in performance.”

But what was the connection between fiasco and failure in the first place? The word descended from the Late Latin or “bottle” (the same root that gives us our modern flask!): in the theatre, an actor was said to “bottle” his performance when he forgot his lines or his cues or stumbled badly on the stage (“bottle” here serving as an oblique reference to drunkenness). One Italian dictionary suggests that this meaning, in turn, came from meaning “to play a game so that the one that loses will pay the fiasco,” in other words, he will buy the next bottle of wine. Fiasco thus emerged in the mid-19th century as theatrical slang for “a failure in performance” and by extension acquired the general sense of “any ignominious failure or dismal flop,” on or off the stage.

Fiasco is commonly described as a word of obscure antecedents, which is what makes it all the more interesting to explore. The rather conventional explanation is the one that one comes across in the etymological dictionary, which says “fiasco” emerges from “the alleged practice of Venetian glassmakers setting aside imperfect glass to make a common bottle or flask.” Even that theory has been embellished by a better version of the word’s origin, in the 1874 book by Charles Bombaugh, that is worth sharing:

Yet another version comes from Italian theatre, at least according to an 1883 issue of the