- 1慘敗；潰敗
A debacle is a complete failure — not a small mistake, but a mess that falls apart in public. A plan, a meeting, a campaign, a product launch can all be a debacle. The word has a French feel and a newspaper feel: people reach for it when they want to say this did not just go wrong; it collapsed. Though actually, in French a débâcle was first the sudden breaking-up of ice on a river in spring — a dam of ice giving way. That picture is still inside the English word: something that seemed solid, then broke all at once. It is fairly formal. In casual talk you might say disaster, fiasco, or “it was a total mess.”
From the word’s history
From French débâcle, from débâcler 'to unbar'; perhaps ultimately Latin baculum 'rod'.
法文 débâcler「拆掉門閂」，可能源自拉丁文 baculum「棍」。
組成Borrowed whole from French débâcle, from débâcler (to unbar, to let loose): dé- (un-, off) + bâcler (to bar, block), going back to Latin baculum, a rod or staff. First used of ice breaking up on a river.
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
debaclenoun/deɪˈbɑː.kəl/
- 1
An event or enterprise that ends suddenly and disastrously, often with humiliating consequences.
- The event proved to be a great debacle for the partisans of this prognosticator.
- The result is a military approach which maximizes political tensions with Russia […] and lays the ground for a military debacle.
- 2
geographygeologynatural-sciencesA breaking up of a natural dam, usually made of ice, by a river and the ensuing rush of water.
- […] so that in extreme cases the latter may even be dammed up for a time, and a debacle be the consequence, when the main river overcomes the resistance opposed to it, […]
- For several months after the debacle just described, the river Dranse, having no settled channel, shifted its position continually […]
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。