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plural debacles
An event or enterprise that ends suddenly and disastrously, often with humiliating consequences. quotations examples
The event proved to be a great debacle for the partisans of this prognosticator.
1952, Boaz Cohen, Epistle to Yemen, translation of original by Maimonides, page 5
The result is a military approach which maximizes political tensions with Russia […] and lays the ground for a military debacle.
1996, Richard L. Canby, “SOF: An Alternative Perspective on Doctrine”, in Schultz et al, editor, Roles And Missions of SOF In The Aftermath Of The Cold War, page 188
The BP Prudhoe Bay debacle [the Prudhoe Bay oil spill] thus provides but the latest in a long line of reasons why leasing this region of the NPR-A is a bad idea.
2007, “Statement by Peter Van Tuyn”, in BP pipeline failure: hearing before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, page 46
(ecology) A breaking up of a natural dam, usually made of ice, by a river and the ensuing rush of water. quotations
[…] 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, […]
1836, Henry De La Beche, How to Observe: Geology, page 69
For several months after the debacle just described, the river Dranse, having no settled channel, shifted its position continually […]
1837, John Lee Comstock, Outlines of Geology, page 51
When this débâcle commences […] , the masses of ice, drifting with the current and unable to pass, are hurled upon those already soldered together; thus an enormous barrier is formed […]
1872, Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, page 425