The word disaster literally means bad star.
It comes from the Italian disastro, built from dis, meaning ill, and astro, star. In the 16th century a calamity was blamed on an unfavourable position of the planets.
Why is this true?
Astrology left many words in everyday language. Consider means to study the stars, influence originally described the flow of power from the heavens, and lunatic comes from luna, the moon.
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Language facts show how much of everyday speech is historical accident. Words that once meant the opposite, letters that vanished from the alphabet, punctuation with names almost nobody uses. Each entry explains the change that produced the oddity — a sound shift, a printing convention, a borrowing from another language — so it works as a genuine explanation and not just as a piece of trivia.