, n. (1) An unfavourable aspect of a star or planet; ‘an obnoxious planet’. Obs. 1602 SHAKES. Ham. I. i. 118 Stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Disasters in the sun; and the moist star, Upon whose influence Neptunes empire stands, Was sick almost to dooms-day with eclipse. 1635 QUARLES Embl., Hieroglyph vii, What dire disaster bred This change, that thus she veils her golden head? (2) a. Anything that befalls of ruinous or distressing nature; a sudden or great misfortune, mishap, or misadventure; a calamity. Usually with a and pl., but also without a, as ‘a record of disaster’. ‘Disaster is etymologically a mishap due to a baleful stellar aspect’ (Whitney Life Lang. vi. (1875) 99). 1591 HORSEY Trav. (Hakluyt Soc). 253 Let those soulls suffer that ar the occasioners of thy disaster and myne. 1598 FLORIO, Disastro, disastre, mischance, ill lucke. 1601 SHAKES. All’s Well III. vi. 55 It was a disaster of warre that Cæsar him selfe could not haue preuented. 1605 Lear I. ii. 131 We make guilty of our disasters the Sun, the Moone, and Starres. 1659 B. HARRIS Parival’s Iron Age 100 Fate, it seems, would needs involve them in the same disasters. 1770 GOLDSM. Des. Vill. 200 Well had the boding tremblers learn’d to trace The day’s disasters in his morning’s face. 1849 MACAULAY Hist. Eng. I. 84 Faithlessness was the chief cause of his disasters, and is the chief stain on his memory. 1874 MORLEY Compromise (1886) 27 Such a system must inevitably bring disaster. (2) b. A bodily affliction or disorder. Obs. rare. 1684 F. ROGERS Let. in Sir H. Slingsby’s Diary (1836) 377, I am very ill of a disaster upon my stomach, yt I cannot ride. (3) attrib., as disaster area, an area in which a major disaster has occurred; also fig.; disaster movie, a film of which the plot centres around a catastrophe or major accident, esp. one involving many people; also, disaster film. 1960 Times 14 Sept. 8/1 President Eisenhower designated sections of the state [of Florida] a major *disaster area. 1969 M. DRABBLE Waterfall 244, I was merely a disaster area, a landscape given to such upheavals. 1970 Guardian 25 Nov. 2/1 Pakistani officials..described the difficulties they had experienced in bringing aid to the disaster area. 1975 Times 7 Feb. 7/6 The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3..has..a touch of the current ‘*disaster film’ cycle. 1976 Times 10 Jan. 7/1 My 12-year-old daughter..has loved every *disaster movie since The Poseidon Adventure. 1986 Christian Science Monitor 15 July 30, I began to See: That what appeared to be an evacuation scene from a disaster movie was actually a quite efficient operation. di saster, a. = DISASTROUS. 1590 GREENE Never too late (1600) 23 No disaster fortune could driue her to make shipwrack of her fixed affection. Ibid. 28 Saturne conspiring with all balefull signes, calculated the houre of thy birth full of disaster accidents. 1600 Look about you xxix. in Hazl. Dodsley VII. 481 Let this be to me a disaster day. 1603 KNOLLES Hist. Turks (1638) 167 Whom disaster fortune..hath inforced to wander here and there. di saster, v. trans. To bring disaster or misfortune upon; to strike with calamity; to ruin, afflict, injure seriously, endamage. (Todd’s sense ‘To blast by the stroke of an unfavourable star’, repeated in later Dicts., seems to be unsupported; his quotation is of a ppl. a. in sense ‘ill-starred,’ ‘hapless’). 1580 [See: DISASTERED]. 1606 SHAKES. Ant. & Cl. II. vii. 16 The holes where eyes should bee, which pittifully disaster the cheeks. 1607 TOPSELL Four-f. Beasts (1658) 158 Neither was there ever any more easie way to disaster these monster-seeming souldiers [elephants in battle] then by casting of stones. 1689 MOYLE Sea Chyrurg. II. xiii. 61 The Cable running out, a Kink therein happened to disaster a Man’s Leg. 1778 M. CUTLER in Life, etc. (1888) I. 70 The French fleet was so disastered they could by no means afford us any assistance. 1784 Ibid. 107 This occasioned the thermometer’s being more slightly secured..and..it was so disastered as to lose almost all the mercury. 1812 W. TENNANT Anster F. III. lvi, Some were cuff’d and much disaster’d found. Hence di sastered, stricken with disaster; ill-starred, hapless. Obs. 1580 SIDNEY Arcadia II. (1613) 163 Ah, chastest bed of mine..how canst thou now receiue this desastred changeling? 1598 BARRET Theor. Warres V. i. 170 At his disastred iourney made into Barbary. 1726-46 THOMSON Winter 279 In his own loose revolving fields, the swain Disastered stands. (From: Oxford English Dictionary/ http: //www.oed.com on 28 June 2004)