debacle

英文词源

débâcle

débâcle: [19] A débâcle is etymologically an ‘act of unbarring’, the notion behind it being that once a restraining bar is removed, a rush of disasters follows. It was borrowed at the start of the 19th century (originally in the technical geological sense of a ‘sudden violent surge of water in a river’) from French, where it was a derivative of débâcler, a verb formed from dé- ‘de-, un-’ and bâcler ‘bar’. This was acquired from Provençal baclar ‘bar a door’, which came from medieval Latin *bacculāre, a derivative of Latin bacculus ‘stick’ (responsible also for English bacillus and bacterium).
=> bacillus, bacterium

debacle (n.)

"disaster," 1848, from French débâcle "downfall, collapse, disaster" (17c.), a figurative use, literally "breaking up (of ice on a river)," extended to the violent flood that follows when the river ice melts in spring; from débâcler "to free," from Middle French desbacler "to unbar," from des- "off" + bacler "to bar," from Vulgar Latin *bacculare, from Latin baculum "stick" (see bacillus). Sense of "disaster" was present in French before English borrowed the word.