fiasco n : a sudden and violent collapse [syn: debacle] [also: fiascoes (pl)]

English

Etymology

From fiasco#Italian - the type of round wine bottle, sometimes wrapped in straw, used traditionally for Chianti wine. The failure sense specifically derives via from the phrase fare fiasco#Italian, literally meaning “make a bottle” (used in Italian theatre to mean “failure in a performance”). This is similar to the informal British English usage of "to bottle out" meaning to "lose one's nerve".

An alternative interpretation of the Italian "far fiasco" as a meaning for failure can be traced to production of glass bottles by glass blowing. A mistake in the process would result in a bottle of irregular shape with protruding or enlarged base is termed "fiasco" as opposed to "bottiglia" /bot'tiʎʎa/ (bottle)

Pronunciation

• /fɪˈæs.kəʊ/, /fI"

• Fiasco (book), full title Fiasco: The American Military Adventure In Iraq, by Thomas E. Ricks (2006)
• Fiasco (band), a noise rock trio formed in Brooklyn in 2005
• Fiasco (novel), a science fiction book by Stanisław Lem (1987)
• fiasco (bottle), a traditional Italian straw-covered wine bottle
• Fiasco (L4 clone), an open-source L4 microkernel family microkernel operating system developed at TU Dresden
• FIASCO, the name used by very early versions of PSPP.
• FIASCO (image format), acronym of "Fractal Image And Sequence Codec", an image compression method http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4367
• Fiasco, a fictional car model featured in Martin Amis's Money (novel)
• The Labrador Fiasco, a novel by Margaret Atwood. (1996)
• The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco, a novel by John Birmingham (1997)
• Lupe Fiasco, rapper
• Wesley Willis Fiasco, a Chicago punk rock band
• The Casual Fiasco, a Burlingtom (VT) rock/reggae band
• Fiestas and Fiascos, an LP album by Lifter Puller (2000)