Law, Policy, and the Social Construction of Disaster

Abstract

Emerging in the English language during the 1590s, the etymological origins of the word “disaster” are found in désastre from Middle French (1560s) and disastro from Italian, meaning “ill-starred,” with “dis-,” a pejorative and “astro” meaning “star” or “planet”—from the Latin astrum and from the Greek ástron. The notion was of “an unfavorable aspect of a star or planet,” a “malevolent astral influence,” or a “calamity blamed on an unfavorable position of a planet.”