How to Use cataclysm in a Sentence

cataclysm

noun
Definition of cataclysmnext
Synonyms for cataclysmnext
  • The country barely survived the cataclysm of war.
  • The revolution could result in worldwide cataclysm.
  • The cataclysm not only wiped out almost all the dinosaurs, only leaving beaked birds behind, but also triggered extinctions and ecological collapses the world over.
    — Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 3 Oct. 2024
  • That dates the cataclysm which caused the burial to 822.
    — The Economist, 18 July 2017
  • The threat of such a cataclysm is what right-wingers have leveraged in the past.
    — Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer, 7 Sep. 2017
  • The first is the P/E based on what the big-caps were earning before the cataclysm.
    — Shawn Tully, Fortune, 8 Feb. 2021
  • Up in the sky, like a crater from some distant cataclysm, was a hollow ring.
    — Annie Dillard, The Atlantic, 20 Mar. 2015
  • That's a faster fall than stocks saw in the financial crisis or even the cataclysm of 1929.
    — TheWeek, 28 Mar. 2020
  • Was that cataclysm somehow necessary for the chain of events that led to life, to you and me, to pizza?
    — Brian Resnick, Vox, 15 July 2019
  • These cataclysms then scatter it through the cosmos, so the shiny stuff then turns up in the dusty discs from which planets form.
    — Michael Irving, New Atlas, 2 Sep. 2024
  • Nineteen sixty-eight was a year of cataclysms in the United States and the Western world.
    — Herbert W. Strupp, National Review, 5 Oct. 2019
  • At the end of the Bronze Age there was a great cataclysm in terms of the breakdown of the social and political order.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 15 May 2013
  • The ban on live music has been a cataclysm for the wedding performers such as those who taught at the Ghos al Din.
    — Los Angeles Times, 24 Sep. 2021
  • But the bottom line is that climate science, and the cataclysm of climate change, has lurched into the present tense.
    — Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, 9 Aug. 2021
  • The latest numbers show the cataclysm is spreading to all parts of the economy.
    — Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/oregonlive, oregonlive, 9 Apr. 2020
  • Substantive changes in the past have required a cataclysm, which the world cannot afford.
    — Anne-Marie Slaughter, Foreign Affairs, 4 Oct. 2016
  • But part of the charm of this book is Paustovsky’s inveterate lyricism in the face of cataclysm.
    — Sophie Pinkham, Washington Post, 10 Feb. 2023
  • The goal is to understand how ferns were able to bounce back from the cataclysm that killed the dinosaurs and the majority of living species at the time.
    — Julia Carmel, Los Angeles Times, 1 June 2023
  • Once launched off the rails of conformity, Jane is a walking cataclysm.
    — Washington Post, 6 Apr. 2021
  • Murphy plays this cataclysm with an all-too-genuine rue and fear.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 3 Dec. 2023
  • Help didn’t come in 2008, but then came the pandemic — truly a once-in-a-lifetime cataclysm.
    — Los Angeles Times, 6 May 2021
  • But despite the warnings of cataclysm from the opposition, the deficit has not soared.
    — Marc Santora and Steven Erlanger, New York Times, 3 Mar. 2018
  • Kolbert’s book warned of cataclysm; Hawken’s tries to prevent it.
    — National Geographic, 28 May 2017
  • The age of mass protest ushered in by the Arab Spring is hardly over, but the record of failures, setbacks, and cataclysms has been dispiriting.
    — Osita Nwanevu, The New Republic, 20 Sep. 2023
  • Even when a cataclysm occurs, and the life of one of Amy’s family members is at stake, the movie keeps us supremely aware of the logistics of the phone.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 13 Sep. 2021
  • The year was 1917, and a proud American tradition was born out of cataclysm.
    — Staff Report, Houston Chronicle, 6 Sep. 2019
  • The cataclysm of 9/11 changes everything for Dana and Charles, but the film doesn’t just culminate in what happens to him in combat.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 19 Dec. 2021
  • Season three finale of the story of a town in New York state three years after a global cataclysm.
    — Seattle Times Staff, The Seattle Times, 31 May 2017
  • The cataclysm of the past 15 months or more calls everything into question.
    — Washington Post, 10 June 2021
  • Imagine if a ghost from the future could have given world leaders in 1914 a glimpse of the cataclysm their policies would produce.
    — Philip Gordon, Foreign Affairs, 22 Mar. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'cataclysm.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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