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TRAGEDY
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Drama in which the protagonist is overcome by some superior force or circumstance; excites terror or pity
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("tragedy" is a kind of...):
drama (the literary genre of works intended for the theater)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "tragedy"):
tragicomedy (a dramatic composition involving elements of both tragedy and comedy usually with the tragic predominating)
Antonym:
comedy (light and humorous drama with a happy ending)
Derivation:
tragic (of or relating to or characteristic of tragedy)
Sense 2
Meaning:
An event resulting in great loss and misfortune
Example:
the earthquake was a disaster
Synonyms:
calamity; cataclysm; catastrophe; disaster; tragedy
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("tragedy" is a kind of...):
bad luck; misfortune (unnecessary and unforeseen trouble resulting from an unfortunate event)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "tragedy"):
act of God; force majeure; inevitable accident; unavoidable casualty; vis major (a natural and unavoidable catastrophe that interrupts the expected course of events)
apocalypse (a cosmic cataclysm in which God destroys the ruling powers of evil)
famine (a severe shortage of food (as through crop failure) resulting in violent hunger and starvation and death)
kiss of death (something that is ruinous)
meltdown (a disaster comparable to a nuclear meltdown)
plague (any large scale calamity (especially when thought to be sent by God))
visitation (any disaster or catastrophe)
tidal wave (an unusual (and often destructive) rise of water along the seashore caused by a storm or a combination of wind and high tide)
tsunami (a cataclysm resulting from a destructive sea wave caused by an earthquake or volcanic eruption)
Derivation:
tragic; tragical (very sad; especially involving grief or death or destruction)
Context examples:
To add to the strain, she could not forget the tragedy.
(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)
"Go and bring that boy down to his dinner, tell him it's all right, and advise him not to put on tragedy airs with his grandfather. I won't bear it."
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
This lost mine was steeped in tragedy and shrouded in mystery.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
He was a good fellow, but his rejoicing at the one little part—in which he was officially interested—of so great a tragedy, was an object-lesson in the limitations of sympathetic understanding.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
But the lack of political response to a priority which affects every citizens reminds us of the debates and tragedies we've been through already.
(Health threats caused by mobile phone radiation, EUROPARL TV)
Tragedy had dwindled, the farce had begun.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
It was a sort of comical affection, too; and yet if she had died, I cannot think what I should have done, or how I should have acted out the tragedy it would have been to me.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I shut up, as well as I could, in my own heart the anxiety that preyed there and entered with seeming earnestness into the plans of my father, although they might only serve as the decorations of my tragedy.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
This also added to my wretchedness, and to crown all, I was haunted by the thought of the tragedy that had once been acted on that plateau, when that ungodly buccaneer with the blue face—he who died at Savannah, singing and shouting for drink—had there, with his own hand, cut down his six accomplices.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
From her bedroom we descended to the sitting-room, where this strange tragedy had actually occurred.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
