A fiasco (pl. fiascoes) means a complete or ridiculous fuck up, especially of a pretentious undertaking.

The word is originally Italian and means a rounded wine bottle, sometimes wrapped by a straw basket, such as used traditionally for the Chianti wine. The metaphorical connection is: they wanted the wine but all they got was an empty bottle. An alternative etymology suggests that Venitian glass blowers would convert failed works of art into such bottles for sale. This is consistent with the Italian idiom being "to make a fiasco", instead of some other construction. Chianti is Italys most famous red wine. ...

Some famous fiascoes

Fiasco is the English title of a science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem. It tells about an expedition sent to a distant star in order to make contact with a civilization that had been detected there. The attempt ends, as the title promises, in complete failure. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... StanisÅ‚aw Lem in 1966 StanisÅ‚aw Lem (born September 12, 1921) is a Polish satirical, philosophical, and science fiction writer. ...

Fiasco is also the name of an open-source L4-compatible microkernel operating system developed at TU Dresden. L4 is, collectively, a family of related computer programs. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Kernel (computer science). ... With over 30,000 students (2002), Dresden University of Technology is the largest institute of higher education in the town of Dresden and the largest university in Saxony. ...

• The Mongols first attempt at invading Japan -- see Kamikaze.
• The Iridium project.
• The Japanese fifth generation computer systems project.
• The dot-com bubble.

Honorary guard of Mongolia. ... A kamikaze, a Mitsubishi Zero in this case, about to hit the USS Missouri. ... The Iridium satellite constellation is a system of 66 active communication satellites and spares around the Earth. ... The PIM/m-1 machine, one of the few fifth generation computers ever produced The Fifth Generation Computer Systems project (FGCS) was an initiative by Japans Ministry of International Trade and Industry, begun in 1982, to create a fifth generation computer (see history of computing hardware) which was supposed... Dot-com (also dotcom or redundantly dot. ...

The fiasco fiasco

Curiously, in modern American usage, the word fiasco increasingly appears to mean "a mess" more so than "a failure". This misuse is apparent from the context of the many quotes and headlines in today's media and casual conversation. It is further evidenced by the Word of the Day entry on the Random House's website. The author opens by stating that most dictionaries 'give the popular meaning we all know --'a failure, a complete mess'. Contrary to the article, the dictionaries still emphasize 'failure' as part of any acceptble definition, despite the widely acceptable -- and now prevalent -- alternative understanding of the meaning of fiasco by the broad public.

References

• Fiasco: The Mavens' Word of the Day, Random House, Dec. 7, 2000