Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Tragedy |
TragedyNoun1. An event resulting in great loss and misfortune; "the whole city was affected by the irremediable calamity"; "the earthquake was a disaster". 2. Drama in which the protagonist is overcome by some superior force or circumstance; excites terror or pity. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "tragedy" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1321. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Dream Interpretation | To dream of a tragedy, foretells misunderstandings and grievious disappointments. To dream that you are implicated in a tragedy, portends that a calamity will plunge you into sorrow and peril. Source: Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted .... |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The hallmarks of a tragedy are:
One of the greatest specialist writers of tragedy in modern times was Jean Racine, who towered over his greatest rival, Pierre Corneille, in terms of talent, and brought a new face to the genre. When his play, Berenice, was criticised for not containing any deaths, Racine disputed the conventional view of tragedy.
In the English language, the most famous and most successful are the tragedies of William Shakespeare and his Elizabethan contemporaries:
The rarity of tragedy in the American theater is probably due to the American ideal, that man is captain of his fate and that justice inevitably rules the affairs of men. However, Arthur Miller stands out as a successful writer of tragic plays. Among them:
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Tragedy."
Synonyms: TragedySynonyms: calamity (n), cataclysm (n), catastrophe (n), disaster (n). (additional references) |
| Antonym: comedy (n). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Evil | Disaster, accident, casualty; mishap; (misfortune); bad job, devil to pay; calamity, bale, catastrophe, tragedy; ruin; (destruction); adversity. |
The Drama | Play, drama, stage play, piece, five-act play, tragedy, comedy, opera, vaudeville, comedietta, lever de rideau, interlude, afterpiece, exode, farce, divertissement, extravaganza, burletta, harlequinade, pantomime, burlesque, opera bouffe, ballet, spectacle, masque, drame comedie drame; melodrama, melodrame; comidie larmoyante, sensation drama; tragicomedy, farcical-comedy; monodrame monologue;duologue trilogy; charade, proverbs; mystery, miracle play; musical, musical comedy. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Life is just a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. (Reality Bites; writing credit: Helen Childress) The tragedy, she said, was that she didn't. (Fight Club; writing credit: Jim Uhls) Some people are just born with tragedy in their blood. (Donnie Darko; writing credit: Richard Kelly) Miss Truvy, I promise that my personal tragedy will not interfere with my ability to do good hair. (Steel Magnolias; writing credit: Robert Harling) The exquisite tragedy! The Susan Hayward of it all! (My Best Friend's Wedding; writing credit: Ronald Bass) | |
Lyrics | Raining in my head like a tragedy (Here Comes the Rain Again; performing artist: Eurythmics) I said the tragedy is how you're gonna spend (The Remedy (I Won't Worry); performing artist: JASON MRAZ) | |
Clever | Tragedy is if I cut my finger, comedy is if I walk into an open sewer and die. (references; author: Mel Brooks) A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic. (references; author: unknown) Life is a comedy for those who think, and a tragedy for those who feel. (references; author: unknown) The greatest tragedy is when man gives up what he wants most for what he wants now! (references; author: unknown) | |
Tongue Twisters | Tragedy strategy. (references; author: unknown) | |
Movie/TV Titles | A Tragedy of Two Ambitions (1973) The Tragedy of King Richard II (1970) Wheels of Tragedy (1963) The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (1952) A Tragedy at Midnight (1942) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
Books |
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Theater & Movies | |||
Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Village of Attu on Attu Island. Attu was one of two Aleutian islands captured by Japanese forces during the Second World War. A tragedy occurred here as the Weather Bureau observer and his wife attempted suicide during the Japanese invasion. The observer succeeded but his wife survived and was incarcerated for the duration of the war. F&WS B-50338. Credit: America's Coastlines. |  | Malnutrition is a tragedy for millions of children and their families. / WHO photo. Credit: National Library of Medicine. |
 | Adding iodine to the diet can prevent the tragedy of cretinism. / WHO/FAO photo. Credit: National Library of Medicine. |  | Closeup view of some of the airship's wreckage, including a leg and foot of one of the 44 victims of the tragedy, soon after it broke up in the air, exploded and crashed into the Humber River off Victoria Pier, Hull, England. Credit: NAVY. |
 | "Right Hand Salute! -- As the body of Lieutenant Commander Omar R. Ford, USN, one of 44 officers and men who lost their lives in USS Oriskany October 26 fire tragedy, is committed to the deep from Oriskany's flight deck during memorial services at sea in the Western Pacific, November 6, en route to San Diego, California. Fire-scarred Oriskany departed Subic Bay, Philippine Islands, for San Diego November 3." (quoted from the original caption released with this image) Note Oriskany's insignia on the light-colored flag, at right, and three destroyers steaming alongside. Nearest destroyer is USS Chevalier (DD-805). Next outboard is USS Gurke (DD-783). Photographed by JOC Dick Wood. Credit: NAVY. |  | A tragedy of the draft. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | This man had faced some tragedy, he could see. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | American tragedy. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | Tragedy strikes happy home. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | The cowpox tragedy - scene the last / G. Cruikshank, sculpt. Credit: Library of Congress. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
| Author | Quotation |
Aristotle | The true end of tragedy is to purify the passions. |
Elbert Hubbard | One can play comedy, two are required for melodrama, but a tragedy demands three. |
Horace Walpole | The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel. |
| Life is a comedy for those who think... and a tragedy for those who feel. | |
| This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel. | |
Jacques Barzun | Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy. |
John Mortimer | Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute. |
Percy Bysshe Shelley | Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. |
Thomas Carlyle | The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | |
| Title | Author | Quote |
Les Miserables | Hugo, Victor | The bourgeoisie love tragedy, and upon that point we must let the bourgeoisie alone. |
Grapes of Wrath | Steinbeck, John | Then a broken gear was tragedy. |
Walden | Thoreau, Henry David | When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Health | Historically, the United States is no stranger to the tragedy of malaria. (references) | |
A SIDS death is a tragedy that can prompt intense emotional reactions among surviving family members. (references) | ||
The injury of actor Christopher Reeve in 1995 drew the nation's attention to the tragedy of spinal cord injury. (references) | ||
Business | Egypt received considerable negative publicity following a series of terrorist attacks, most notably the Luxor tragedy of 1997. However, the reality is that terrorism in Egypt has almost vanished, owing in part to a much stronger and more aggressive security presence throughout the country since the Luxor attack. (references) | |
Human Rights | United Kingdom | Some family members of the victims initiated a civil action in November against individuals identified as suspects in a documentary prepared by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). In December the police ombudsman for Northern Ireland released a report on the Omagh bombing, which charged that the "victims, their families, and officers of the RUC [PSNI] have been let down by defective leadership, poor judgment and a lack of urgency." The report criticized inadequate information sharing within the police and concluded that it will never be known whether the bombing could have been prevented if the police had acted differently in response to intelligence information received prior to the tragedy. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| Speaker | Phrase(s) |
Dennis Miller | Exploiting tragedy is nothing new. |
Donald Rumsfeld | Well, I guess the most important thing I can say is that it's a terrible tragedy and our heart goes out to the families and the friends of those fine people. We lost some Afghans also in that same incident. |
Gerald Ford | Theirs is an American tragedy in which we all have played a part. It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that. And if I can, I must. |
Rudolph Giuliani | You got it. It's a police officer has been shot, fire fighter has been burned, some terrible tragedy has occurred, a plane has crashed. |
Rush Limbaugh | One of the most appalling things about the coverage of the space shuttle accident has been the Democrats' attempt to exploit the tragedy for petty political gain. |
William Shatner | Tragedy, loss, grief. Big, big factor of grief. And so, to take the moment and say my heart, our hearts go out to all those people who are grieving Danny Pearl and the rest of the world, there's so many, so many tragedies. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Speaker | Term | Phrase(s) |
Lyndon B. Johnson | 1963-1969 | This is a tragedy that Americans can, and Americans should, prevent. |
Gerald Ford | 1974-1977 | The opportunities for a final settlement are great, and the price of failure is a return to the bloodshed and hatred that for too long have brought tragedy to all of the peoples of this area and repeatedly edged the world to the brink of war. |
Ronald Reagan | 1981-1989 | For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. |
Bill Clinton | 1993-2001 | Like Richard Dean, she helped pull her fellow citizens out of the rubble and deal with that awful tragedy. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| "Tragedy" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Tragedy" is used about 1,803 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 100% | 1,803 | 4,692 |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "tragedy": family tragedy ♦ mock tragedy. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "tragedy": tragedy-centred, tragedy-haunted, tragedy-queen. | |
Ending with "tragedy": Greek-tragedy, love-tragedy, post-tragedy, she-tragedy, verse-tragedy. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "tragedy"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Afrikaans | tragedie. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Albanian | tragjedi (buskin). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Arabic | الفاجعة, المأساة, التراجيديا. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bulgarian | трагедия (cothurnus). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chinese | 悲劇 , 悲剧 (Tragedies, tragic). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Czech | tragédie (cothurnus). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Danish | tragedie. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dutch | tragisch (tragic). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Esperanto | tragedio, tragedia. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Farsi | فاجعه (Calamity, Catastrophe), مصیبت (Bale, Calamity, Catastrophe, Curse, Disaster, Sorrow), نمایش حزن انگیز, سوگ نمایش . (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Finnish | tragiikka, tragedia, murhenäytelmä, murhemieli. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
French | tragédie. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Frisian | tragedy. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
German | Tragödie, Tragik, Trauerspiel (fiasco). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Greek | τραγωδία. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hebrew | אסון (accident, calamity, catastrophe, disaster), טר'יות, טר'"י". (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hungarian | tragédia (catastrophe, tragic, tragic drama). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Indonesian | dukacerita. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Italian | tragedia. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Kanji | 惨劇 (tragic event). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Katakana | トラジディー , ひさ" (arsenic acid, disaster, dispersal, flying, misery, pitiful, scattering, wretched), ひ'き, さ"'き (tragic event). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Korean | 비극 (Tragedies, tragic). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Manx | doo-skeeal, branchloie. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Papiamen | tragedia. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | agedytray tragédia (buskin). (various references) tragedie (buskin). (various references) трагедия (cothurnus). (various references) tragedija (buskin). (various references) tragedia (cothurnus, drama). (various references) tragedi. (various references) trajedi (buskin), felâket (affliction, bane, blight, blow, calamity, calvary, casualty, cataclysm, catastrophe, debacle, disaster, distress, fatality, fate, harm, hell, hell of, helluva, misfortune, mishap, plague, scathe, scourge, undoing), facia (disaster), acikli (affecting, dismal, dreary, gaunt, miserable, moving, sad, touching, tragic). (various references) tragediяa (r). (various references) трагічна ситуація, трагедія (buskin, cothurnus). (various references) tấn thảm kịch. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Greek | 700 BCE-300 CE | tragoida. (various references) |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | tragedia. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Misspellings | |
"Tragedy" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: tradedy, tradegy, tradgedy, tragdey, trage, traged, tragedie, tragety, tragey, treedy, tregedy, trigamy, Trivedi. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "tragedy" (pronounced tra"judē) |
| 3 | -u d ē | anybody, comedy, custody, malady, melody, nobody, parody, perfidy, prosody, raggedy, remedy, rhapsody, subsidy. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
Direct Anagrams: gyrated. | |
| Words within the letters "a-d-e-g-r-t-y" | |
-1 letter: grated, grayed, gyrate. | |
-2 letters: dater, deary, derat, deray, gated, gayer, grade, grate, great, gyred, raged, rated, rayed, ready, retag, tardy, tared, targe, teary, terga, trade, tread, tyred, yager. | |
-3 letters: aery, aged, ager, arty, dare, dart, date, dear, drag, drat, dray, dreg, dyer, edgy, egad, eyra, gaed, gate, gear, geta, grad, grat, gray, grey. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-d-e-g-r-t-y" | |
+1 letter: gadgetry. | |
+2 letters: budgetary. | |
+3 letters: derogatory. | |
+4 letters: dehydrating, denigratory, dermatology, designatory, hydrogenate, rehydrating, tragicomedy, typographed. | |
+5 letters: bigheartedly, degenerately, derogatively, derogatorily, farsightedly, glycerinated, hydrogenated, hydrogenates, laryngitides, retrogradely. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)54 72 61 67 65 64 79 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references)- .-. .- --. . -.. -.--. |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01010100 01110010 01100001 01100111 01100101 01100100 01111001 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)T r a g e d y |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0054 0072 0061 0067 0065 0064 0079 |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)54846773717091 |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Slideshow 7. Images: Photo Album 8. Quotations: Familiar | 9. Quotations: Fiction 10. Quotations: Non-fiction 11. Quotations: Spoken 12. Quotations: Speeches | 13. Usage Frequency 14. Expressions 15. Expressions: Internet 16. Translations: Modern | 17. Translations: Ancient 18. Derivations 19. Rhymes 20. Anagrams | 21. Orthography 22. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
