débacle: [19] A débacle is etymologically an ‘act of unbarring’, the notion behind it being that once a restraining bar is removed, a rush of disasters follows. It was borrowed at the start of the 19th century (originally in the technical geological sense of a ‘sudden violent surge of water in a river’) from French, where it was a derivative of débacler, a verb formed from dé- ‘de-, un-’ and bacler ‘bar’. This was acquired from Proven?al baclar ‘bar a door’, which came from medieval Latin *bacculāre, a derivative of Latin bacculus ‘stick’ (responsible also for English bacillus and bacterium). => bacillus, bacterium
debacle (n.)
"disaster," 1848, from French débacle "downfall, collapse, disaster" (17c.), a figurative use, literally "breaking up (of ice on a river)," extended to the violent flood that follows when the river ice melts in spring; from débacler "to free," from Middle French desbacler "to unbar," from des- "off" + bacler "to bar," from Vulgar Latin *bacculare, from Latin baculum "stick" (see bacillus). Sense of "disaster" was present in French before English borrowed the word.
例文
1. Many men were shot or captured in the debacle .
敗軍は潰走時に多くの人が射殺されたり捕虜になったりした。
2.The Argentine debacle has important lessons to teach.
アルゼンチンの崩壊は重要な教訓を提供した。
3.After the debacle of the war the world was never the same again.
この戦争の惨敗を経験してから、世界はもう元の姿ではなくなった。
4.His first performance was a debacle ：the audience booed him off the stage.