castastrophe

Updated: May 16, 2025

The conflict in Acadia has a melancholy interest, since it ended in a castastrophe which prose and verse have joined to commemorate, but of which the causes have not been understood.

Francis Parkman - Montcalm and Wolfe

The lad's dismay now became complete, yet it appeared in no other way than in the forlorn expression of his sharp, pale countenance, and in the unconscious appeal with which his blue eyes surveyed Madge and me in turn. But in a few moments he collected himself, as if for the necessary dealing with some unexpected castastrophe, and asked me, a little huskily still: "When will he come home?"

Robert Neilson Stephens - Philip Winwood: A Sketch of the Domestic History of an American Captain in the War of Independence; Embracing Events that Occurred between and during the Years 1763 and 1786, in New York and London: written by His Enemy in War, Herbert Russell, Lieutenant in the Loyalist Forces.

The abolition of rotten boroughs brought down a thousand ominous references to noyades, fusillades, and guillotines. When Sir Robert Peel took the duty off corn, Croker warned him with great solemnity that he was breaking up the old interests, dividing the great families, and beginning exactly such a castastrophe as did the Noailles and the Montmorencis in 1789.

John Morley - Studies in Literature