catastrophize
/kəˈtæstɹəfaɪz/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.09 in modern English
29
Scrabble Score
13
Letters
4
Syllables
11
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To regard a bad situation as if it were disastrous or catastrophic.
Intransitive verb; Transitive verb
verb
To expose a behavior pattern of seeking the worst interpretation and magnifying the disagreeable outcomes (of).
Intransitive verb; Transitive verb
Example Sentences
- "Particularly likely to overreact are those who tend to catastrophize (Ellis, 1962) and those who have Type A personalities (Friedman & Rosenman, 1974)."
- "Another way to catastrophize is to jump to an extreme conclusion from an unimportant or irrelevant event."
- "[I]ndividuals who catastrophized reported worse health-related quality of life, higher psychological distress, and perceived more somatic symptoms, worse consequences, and more severe emotional impact as compared to those participants who did not catastrophize."
- "“The Great Feminization” catastrophizes wildly about the future, presumably because what’s happening in the present utterly undermines its central thesis."
Etymology
Etymology tree English catastrophe Proto-Indo-European *-id- Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-idyéti Proto-Hellenic *-íd͏̌d͏̌ō Ancient Greek -ῐ́ζω (-ĭ́zō)bor. Late Latin -izōder. Middle French -iserbor. Middle English -isen English -ize English catastrophize From catastrophe + -ize.